Closed-form Swept Volume of Implicit Surfaces

Recent developments in formulations for generating swept volumes have made a significant impact on the efficiency of employing such algorithms and on the extent to which formulations can be used in representing complex shapes. In this paper, we outline a method for employing the representation of implicit surfaces using the Jacobian rank deficiency condition presented earlier for the sweep of parametric surfaces. A numerical and broadly applicable analytic formulation is developed that yields the exact swept volume. INTRODUCTION Swept volumes have become increasingly important in modern Computer-Aided Design because of the need to represent the trace of objects that have experienced motion. Such applications are numerous and encompass solid modeling, manufacturing automation, robot analysis, collision detection, and computer graphics. In this report we present new results pertaining to the sweep of implicit surfaces using the Jacobian rank deficiency conditions [1-4]. Recent work published in the special edition of Computer-Aided Design [5] dedicated to the subject of swept volumes has outlined a method for trimming swept volumes. For a review of prior work in this field, the reader is referred to Abdel-Malek and Yeh [1] for a comprehensive review. The work presented in [5] is the continuation of a robust method introduced in many reports [6-9] that employs the concept of a differential sweep equation. While the method is aimed at computing trimming curves in order to remove points that are in the interior of the boundary of the swept volume, the technique by which the authors have formulated the problem is of interest. Surfaces and solids implicitly represented were considered in the sweep equation. We shall adapt this same representation but we will apply the Jacobian rank deficiency method (never before used for implicitly defined equations) to obtain singular sets. These sets will describe (implicitly) surfaces that exist on the exterior and in the interior of the swept volume. Combining these surfaces (referred to as singular surfaces) yields an exact representation of the swept volume. The method of Jacobian rank deficiency method was developed for parametric surfaces [1-4] and was shown to handle selfintersections, multiple parameter sweeping, and solid property computations. The method was never applied to implicitly defined surfaces because of the lack of formulations for proper representation of such surfaces in a consistent numerical algorithm. This report will outline a systematic method for computing the swept volume of implicit surfaces. In order to compare with the method recently presented by Blackmore, et al. [5], we shall treat one of the same self-