Feature-based design and material blending for free-form heterogeneous object modeling

In this paper. a new feature-based method is proposed to represent and design heterogeneous objects. Material governing features are defined to control material composition inside the objects. Interrelations between the material governing features and material attributes are established in the design process and retained in the object model. Free-form B-spline functions are used to represent complex shapes of geometry and material features. A new material feature blending method is used to determine continuous material variation. To obtain the best material features, an optimization problem is constructed based on the object's functional requirements. Variant models are easily generated by changing the geometric and material features using the constraints between them. Implementation and examples are also presented in this paper. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.