Volume decomposition of CAD models for rapid prototyping technology

Purpose – This paper reports on the work done to decompose a large sized solid model into smaller solid components for rapid prototyping technology. The target geometric domain of the solid model includes quadrics and free form surfaces.Design/methodology/approach – The decomposition criteria are based on the manufacturability of the model against a user‐defined manufacturing chamber size and the maintenance of geometrical information of the model. In the proposed algorithm, two types of manufacturing chamber are considered: cylindrical shape and rectangular shape. These two types of chamber shape are commonly implemented in rapid prototyping machines.Findings – The proposed method uses a combination of the regular decomposition (RD)‐method and irregular decomposition (ID)‐method to split a non‐producible solid model into smaller producible subparts. In the ID‐method, the producible feature group decomposition (PFGD)‐method focuses on the decomposition by recognising producible feature groups. In the deco...

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