Modelling and Indexing of Fuzzy Complex Shapes

At the conceptual stage of design, designers have only vague ideas of initial shapes that they gradually refine. A tool that supports conceptual design should capture such imprecise features but current CAD systems that are based on precise geometry and topology information cannot satisfy this requirement. The fuzzy set approach is particularly suitable for handling imprecise information by providing a set of solutions with different, user-specified preference degrees. We therefore choose this approach to address the imprecise design problem in a solid modelling system. Design data need to be stored in a database and accessed in later design process because of the iterative nature of design. This paper presents the representation, construction and display approaches for fuzzy shapes. We also discuss techniques for indexing and retrieving of fuzzy shapes in an object relational database with a fuzzy processing module.