A scheme for 3D object reconstruction from dimensioned orthographic views

Abstract 3D object reconstruction from 2D orthographic views has been a major research issue during the past two decades. Existing algorithms assume coordinate-based, noise- and error-free input without dimensioning annotation. The approach presented here assumes that the original input is a real-life engineering drawing, in which the 2D geometry of each orthographic view is annotated with dimensioning. Detected dimensions are translated into sets of constraints, one for each view, from which proper dimensioning is validated and 2D minimal graphs are obtained. The method combines elements from variational geometry, matrix algebra and graph theory to construct a composite network describing the structural and topological relations among the various entities that combine the 3D object. This graph provides the basis for a complete 3D object reconstruction. The paper describes the details of the method, and demonstrates it on a comprehensive example.