Abstract
Form features intrinsic to the product shape can be recognized using a convex decomposition called Alternating Sum of Volumes with Partitioning (ASVP). However, the domain of geometric objects to which ASVP decomposition can be applied had been limited to polyhedral solids due to the difficulty of convex hull construction for solids with curved boundary faces. We develop an approach to extend the geometric domain to solids having cylindrical and blending features. Blending surfaces are identified and removed from the boundary representation of the solid, and a polyhedral model of the unblended solid is generated while storing the cylindrical geometric information. From the ASVP decomposition of the polyhedral model, polyhedral form features are recognized. Form feature decomposition of the original solid is then obtained by reattaching the stored blending and cylindrical information to the form feature components of its polyhedral model. In this way, a larger domain of solids can be covered by the feature recognition method using ASVP decomposition. In this paper, handling of blending features in this approach is described.