Generation of bi-monotone patches from quadrilateral mesh for reverse engineering

Thanks to recent improvements, computational methods can now be used to convert triangular meshes into quadrilateral meshes so that the quadrilateral elements capture well the principal curvature directional fields of surfaces and intrinsically have surface parametric values. In this study, a quadrilateral mesh generated using the mixed integer quadrangulation technique of Bommes et al. is used for input. We first segment a quadrilateral mesh into four-sided patches. The feature curves inside these patches are then detected and are constrained to act as the patch boundaries. Finally, the patch configuration is improved to generate large patches. The proposed method produces bi-monotone patches, which are appropriate for use in reverse engineering to capture the surface details of an object. A shape control parameter that can be adjusted by the user during the patch generation process is also provided to support the creation of patches with good bi-monotone shapes. This study mainly targets shape models of mechanical parts consisting of major smooth surfaces with feature curves between them. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.