Surface Reconstruction Using Dexel Data From Three Sets of Orthogonal Rays

Triple-dexel modeling is a geometric representation method, which depicts the intersection of a solid with rays cast in three orthogonal directions. Due to its fast Boolean operations, simple data structure, and easy implementation, triple-dexel modeling is highly suitable for real-time graphics-based simulation applications such as numerical control (NC) machining verification and virtual sculpting. This paper presents a novel surface reconstruction method from triple-dexel data by first converting the triple-dexel data into contours on three sets of orthogonal slices and then generating the solid's boundary surface in triangular facets from these contours. The developed method is faster than the voxel-based method, and the reconstructed surface model is more accurate than the surface reconstructed from voxel representation using the marching cube algorithm. Examples are given to demonstrate the ability of surface reconstruction from the triple-dexel model in virtual sculpting. [DOI:10.1115/1.3086034]