Motion-Based Shape Deformation of Solid Models

Mechanical designs undergo numerous geometric changes throughout the design process. Performing these changes relies, whenever possible, on the parametric models used to create the initial geometry. However, a number of open issues prevent the current parametric modeling systems to support many practical design situations, which, in turn, forces the geometry to evolve independently of the original parametric model. The fact that every parametric update can be expressed in terms of a sequence of shape deformations implies that the same geometric updates could be obtained, at least in principle, via shape deformation procedures that parameterize the deformation itself. In this paper we propose a new approach to create and edit solid models by introducing a geometric deformation procedure that relies on motion interpolation. We show that the proposed approach induces a parametrization of the deformation that allows direct control and editing of the deformation, is capable of preserving important geometric invariants such as constant cross-sectional properties of the deformed models, and maintains the ability to perform parametric optimization of the associated solid models. We conclude by discussing advantages and limitations of this approach as well as a number of important research directions that we will pursue in the near future.