A 3-D Visualization Tool for Surface Metrology

Surface topography characterization is important in many industrial applications. Several parameters have been defined and included in the standards for this purpose. Many papers address the issue of whether these parameters adequately describe the geometry of the surface and their effectiveness in relating to function or the process. However, there has not been a lot of work in the area of graphical representation and visualization of surface metrology data. Visualization is a necessary tool to make sense of the flood of information that is being generated with increasing computing capability. Visualization tools help to represent the raw data and also comprehend the different parameters and related information. This paper explores the use of The Visualization Toolkit (VTK) to build a visualization toolbox for surface metrology. The toolbox is built on a C++ and Motif platform using VTK classes. Applications highlighting the value of this tool are also presented.