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CAD FOR MANUFACTURING
(ME 60305)
Dr. Sankha Deb

Department of Mechanical Engineering
Email: sankha.deb@mech.iitkgp.ernet.in
Phone: 282912
CAD for Manufacturing
Course coverage:
• Introduction to CAD/CAM/CAE for manufacturing.
• Introduction to geometric modelling. Basic modelling and representation of lines, curves,
surfaces and solids. Constructive Solids Geometry. Surface modelling techniques.
Solids Modelling. Boundary Representation. Spatial enumerative techniques. Object
representation.
• Object validation. Constraints and feature modelling. Feature based data representation.
• Object visualization. Texturing. Ray tracing and related algorithms.
• Assembly modelling. Feature based analysis. Disassembly analysis. Manufacturing
analysis.
• Dimensioning, Tolerance and fits representation and analysis. Product manufacturing
planning. Design Structure matrix. Data extraction for product design analysis.
• Elements of primary processes CAD modelling – Casting, Rapid prototyping etc.
• Tools for automated generation of cutter path from CAD representation in secondary
processes. Rapid Prototyping and machine data generation from CAD models. Elements
and data structures for standards based data exchanges – IGES, STEP, STP etc. Web-
based product visualization and collaboration. Web based manufacturing planning.
Lecture material available on Course Homepage

http://www.facweb.iitkgp.ernet.in/~sankhadeb/ME60305.html
Introduction to CAD/CAM/CAE
• In order to survive world’s competition, today’s industries must introduce new products with
better quality, at lower cost and with shorter lead time for delivery.
• Accordingly they have used the computer’s huge memory capacity, fast processing speed,
and user friendly interactive graphics capabilities to automate and integrate otherwise
cumbersome and separate engineering or production tasks, thus reducing the time and
cost of product development and production.
• Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) and Computer-

Aided Engineering (CAE) are the technologies used for this purpose during the product
cycle.
• The typical product cycle is shown in Figure in the next slide.

Introduction to CAD/CAM/CAE (continued)
• As indicated in Figure, the product cycle is composed of two main processes: the
design process and the manufacturing process.
• The design process starts from customer’s demands that are identified by the
marketting personnel and ends with a complete description of the product,
usually in the form of a drawing.
• The manufacturing process starts from the design specifications and ends with
shipping of the actual products.
• The activities involved in the design process can be classified largely as two
types: synthesis and analysis.
• As illustrated in Figure, the initial design activities (such as identification of design need, formulation
of design specifications, feasibility study with collecting relevant design information, and design
conceptualization) are part of the synthesis subprocess.
• That is the result of the synthesis subprocess is a conceptual design of the prospective product in
the form of a sketch or a layout drawing that shows the relationships among the various components
as well as any surrounding constraints.
• The major financial commitment needed to realize the product idea are made and the functionality of
the product is determined during this phase of the cycle.
• Most of the information generated and handled in the synthesis subprocess is qualitative and
consequently is hard to capture in a computer system.
• Once the conceptual design has been developed, the analysis subprocess begins with analysis and
optimization of the design.
• An analysis model is derived first because the analysis subprocess is applied to the model rather than the
design itself.
• The analysis model is obtained by removing from the design unnecessary details, reducing dimensions
and recognizing and employing symmetry.
• Dimensional reduction, for example, implies that a thin sheet of material is represented by an equivalent
surface with a thickness attribute or that a long slender region is represented by a line having cross-
sectional properties.
• Bodies with symmetries in their geometry and loading are usually analyzed by considering a portion of the
model.
• Once a design has been completed, after optimization or some tradeoff decisions, the design
evaluation phase begins.
• Prototypes may be built for this purpose.
• Prototypes can be built in a laboratory or a computer to test the design.
• Computer prototypes are less expensive and faster to generate.
• Nowadays new technologies like rapid prototyping are becoming popular for constructing prototypes.
• The rapid prototyping process fabricates the object by starting at the base and building each layer on
top of the preceding layer to approximate the solid shape.
• As layer thickness decreases, accuracy increases.
• There are variety of layer-building processes used in rapid prototyping.
• Stereolithography uses a photosensitive liquid polymer that cures (solidifies) when subjected to intense
light. Curing is accomplished using a moving laser beam whose path at each layer is controlled by the
CAD model.
• If the design evaluation of the prototype indicates that the design is unsatisfactory, the
process described is repeated with a new design.
• When the outcome of the design evaluation is satisfactory, the design documentation is
prepared.
• This includes preparation of drawings, reports, and bill of materials.
• Conventionally, blueprints are made from the drawings and passed on to manufacturing.
• As illustrated in Figure, the manufacturing process begins with process planning, using the drawings from
the design process, and it ends with the actual products.
• Process planning is a function that establishes which processes – and the proper parameters for the
processes – are to be used.
• It also selects the machines that will perform the processes.
• The outcome of process planning is a production plan, materials order and machine programming.
• Once process planning has been completed,

the actual product is produced and inspected
against quality requirements.
• Parts that pass the quality control inspection

are assembled, functionally tested,
packaged, labeled, and shipped to the
customers.
• Let us discuss how the computer or CAD, CAM and CAE technologies, are employed in
the cycle.
• The analysis subprocess of the design process is the area where computer finds
application.
• There are many available software packages for stress analysis, interference checking,
and kinematic analysis, etc. These software packages are classified as CAE.
• However, an analysis model must be derived first from the conceptual design by
eliminating unnecessary details from the design or by reducing its dimensions.
• The proper level of abstraction differs, depending on the type of analysis and the desired
accuracy of the solution.
• It is a common practice to create the abstract shape of the design by using a computer-
aided drafting system or a geometric modeling system or sometimes by using the built-in
capabilities of the analysis packages.
• Analysis packages usually require the structure of interest to be represented by an
aggregation of interconnected meshes that divide the problem into manageable chunks for
the computer.
• This activity of generating meshes is called finite element modeling. It also includes the
activity of specifying the boundary conditions and external loads.
• The design is further optimized by implementing various optimization procedures with the
help of computer.
• The design evaluation phase can be also facilitated by the use of computer.
• If a prototype is needed for design evaluation, it can be constructed by using software

packages that automatically generates the program that drives rapid prototyping machines.
• Alternatively a virtual prototype of the design known as digital mockup can be also
prepared.
• It is based on virtual reality technology, and involves the use of the CAD geometric model
to construct a digital mock-up of the product.
• It enables the designer and the others to obtain the sensation of the real physical product
without actually building the physical prototype.
• Virtual prototyping has been used in automotive industry to evaluate new car style designs.
Other applications include checking the feasibility of assembly operations.
• The final phase of the design process is design documentation. In this phase, computer-
aided drafting is a powerful tool.
• CAD systems can be used as automated drafting machines to prepare highly accurate
engineering drawings quickly.
• CAD systems increase the productivity in the drafting function by about five fold over
manual preparation of drawings.
• The file handling capability of computer drafting systems also allows systematic storage
and retrieval of documents.
• Computer technologies are also used in manufacturing process and can be classified
as Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) e.g. production planning, ordering
materials, NC programming, quality control and so on.
• For example, computer-aided process planning (CAPP) software to aid the process
planning activity is one type of CAM software.
• There are software packages that can generate the numerically controlled (NC)
programs that drive NC machines.
• In addition, also belonging to CAM are the software packages to program the robot
motion to assemble components or deliver them to the various manufacturing
activities, or to program a coordinate measuring machine (CMM) to inspect the
product.
• Computer-Aided Design (CAD) is the technology concerned with the use of computer
systems to assist in the creation, modification, analysis, and optimization of a design.
• CAD tools can vary from geometric tools for manipulating shapes, tolerance analysis, mass
property calculation, finite element modeling and visualization of the analysis results,
optimization, to name a few.
• The most basic role of CAD is to define the geometry of design. Computer-aided drafting
and geometric modeling are typically used for this purpose.
• The geometry created by these systems can be used as a basis for performing other
functions in CAE and CAM.
• Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) is the technology concerned with the use of
computer systems to plan, manage and control manufacturing operations through either
direct or indirect computer interface with the plant’s production resources.
• Some CAM applications for manufacturing planning are Computer-Aided Process

Planning, Computer-assisted NC part programming, computerized machinability data
systems, development of work standards, cost estimating, production and inventory
planning, computer-aided line balancing, and so on.
• Some CAM applications for manufacturing control are process monitoring and control,
quality control, shop floor control, inventory control, and just-in-time systems, and so on.
• Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) is the technology concerned with the use of
computer systems to plan, manage and control manufacturing operations through either
direct or indirect computer interface with the plant’s production resources.
Manufacturing planning
• CAM applications for manufacturing planning are those in which the computer is used
indirectly to support the production function.
• The computer is used “offline” to provide information for the effective planning and
management of production activities.
• Some important applications of CAM in this category are:
CAPP, Computer-assisted NC part programming, computerized machinability data

systems, development of work standards, cost estimating, production and inventory
planning, computer-aided line balancing and so on.
Computer-Aided Process Planning (CAPP)
• Process planning is concerned with the preparation of route sheets that list the
sequence of operations and work centres required to produce the product and its
components.
• Computer-Aided Process Planning (CAPP) systems are available today to prepare

these route sheets.
Computer-assisted NC part programming
• For complex part geometries, computer-assisted part programming represents a much

more efficient method of generating the control instructions for the machine tool than the
manual part programming.
Computerized machinability data systems
• One of the problems in operating a machine tool is determining the speeds and feeds.
• Computer programs have been written to recommend the appropriate cutting conditions to use for
different materials.
• The calculations are based on data obtained either in the factory or lab that relate tool life to
cutting conditions.
Development of work standards
• Establishing the time standards by direct time study can be a tedious and time consuming task.
• There are several commercial packages for setting work standards.
• These computer programs use standard time data that have been developed for basic work
elements that comprise any manual task.
• By summing the times for individual elements required to perform a new job, the program
calculates the standard time for the job.
Cost estimating
• The task of estimating the cost of a new product has been simplified in most industries by
computerizing several of the key steps required to prepare the estimate.
• The computer is programmed to apply the appropriate labor and overhead rates to the sequence
of planned operations for the components of new products.
• The program then sums the individual component costs from the engineering bill of materials to
determine the overall product cost.
Production and inventory planning
• The computer has found widespread use in many of the functions in production and inventory
planning.
• These functions include: maintenance of inventory records, automatic reordering of stock items
when inventory is depleted, production scheduling, maintaining current priorities for the different
production orders, materials requirement planning, and capacity planning.
Production and inventory planning (continued)
• The production schedule is a specific plan of the quantities to be produced of individual

models within each product line.
• The Materials Requirement Planning (MRP) is a planning technique usually

implemented by computer that translates the production schedule of end products into a
detailed schedule for the raw materials and parts used in those end products.
• Capacity planning is concerned with determining the labor and equipment resources
needed to achieve the production schedule.
Computer-aided line balancing
• Finding the best allocation of work elements among stations on an assembly line is a
large and difficult problem if the line is of significant size.
• Computer programs have been developed to assist in the solution of this problem.
Manufacturing control
• The second category of CAM applications is concerned with developing computer
systems to implement the manufacturing control function.
• It is concerned with managing and controlling the physical operations in the factory.
• These management and control areas include:
process monitoring and control, quality control, shop floor control, inventory control, and
just-in-time systems.
Process monitoring and control
• Process monitoring and control is concerned with observing and regulating the
production equipment and manufacturing processes in the plant.
• The applications of computer process control in automated production systems include

transfer lines, assembly systems, CNC, robotics, material handling, and flexible
manufacturing systems.
Quality control
• It includes a variety of approaches to ensure the highest quality levels in the

manufactured product.
Shop floor control
• It refers to production management techniques for collecting data from factory

operations and using the data to help control production and inventory in the factory.
Inventory control
• It is concerned with maintaining the most appropriate levels of inventory in the face of
two opposing objectives: minimizing the inventory and storage costs of holding inventory
and maximizing service to the customers.
Just-in-time production systems
• The term just-in-time refers to a production system that is organized to deliver exactly
the right number of each component to downstream work stations in the manufacturing
sequence just at the time when that component is needed.
• It applies to not only production operations but to supplier delivery operations as well.
• Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) is a technology concerned with the use of computer
systems to analyze CAD geometry, allowing the designer to simulate and study how the
product will behave so that the design can be refined and optimized.
• CAE tools are available for a wide range of analyses e.g. kinematics analyses, mass
properties analysis, Interference checking, tolerance analysis, finite element analysis and
so on.
• For example, kinematic analysis can be used to study the operation of mechanical
linkages to analyze their motions.
• Typically it consists of specifying the motion of one or more driving members of the linkage
and the resulting motions of other links are determined by the analysis package.
• Dynamic analysis extends the kinematic analysis by including the effects of mass of each
linkage member and the resulting acceleration forces as well as any externally applied
forces.
• Mass properties analysis involves computation of volume, surface area, weight, centre
of gravity, etc.
• It is especially applicable in mechanical design.
• Inerference checking examines the 2-D geometric models to identify interferences

between components.
• It is useful for analyzing mechanical assemblies.
• Software for Tolerance analysis is used for various functions like

– To assess how the tolerance affects the product’s function and operating performance
– To determine how the tolerance affects the ease or difficulty of assembling the product
– To assess how the variations in the component dimensions affect the overall size of the
assembly
• Another widely used method of computer analysis in engineering is finite element
analysis (FEA) used to determine stress, deformation, heat transfer, magnetic field
distribution, fluid flow and other problem.
• It is a numerical analysis technique for determining the approximate solutions to

physical problems described by differential equations that are very difficult or
impossible to solve.
• In FEA, the physical object is modeled by an assemblage of discrete interconnected

nodes (finite elements) and the variable of interest in each node is expressed by
simple mathematical equations.
• By solving the equations for each node, the distribution of values of the variable
throughout the physical object is determined.
FEA model to analyze the temperature of a cutting tool
• A proper level of abstract model is required by the finite element method instead of the design
geometry itself.
• The abstract model is obtained by eliminating the unnecessary details from the design geometry
or by reducing the dimensions of the design geometry.
• For example, a 3D object having thin thickness may become a 2D shell model when it is converted
to an analysis model.
• It is necessary to generate the abstract model either automatically or interactively in order to use a
finite element method. Once the abstract model has been developed, the finite elements are
generated to yield the analysis model.
• The software tools that enable the construction of the abstract model and generation of the finite
elements are called pre-processors.
• After performing an analysis on each element, the computer assembles the results and displays it
visually e.g. areas of high stress may be shown in red. The software tools for this visualization are
called post-processors.
• Thus CAD, CAM, and CAE are concerned with automating specific functions of the product cycle
and making them more efficient.
• Because they were developed separately, they have not fully realized the potential of integrating
the design and manufacturing activities of the product cycle.
• To solve this problem, a technology called computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) has been
introduced.
• CIM is aimed at integrating the separate “islands of automation” together into a smoothly running
efficient system.
• CIM is concerned with using the computer database as a way to run an entire enterprise more
efficiently, having an impact on accounting, scheduling, shipping and other management functions
in addition to the engineering design and production functions of concern to CAD/CAM/CAE.
• CIM is often said to be more of a business philosophy than a computer system.

Wireframe models
• A wireframe model of an object is the simplest geometric model that can be used to represent
it mathematically in the computer.
• The word wireframe is related to the fact that one may imagine a wire that is bent to follow the
object edges to generate the model.
• A wireframe model consists entirely of points, lines, arcs, circles, conics and curves.
• It is the most commonly used technique and all commercial CAD/CAM systems are
wireframe-based.
Advantages of Wireframe models
•The major advantage of wireframe modeling is its simplicity to construct.
•It does not require much computer time and memory as does surface or solid modeling.
•However, the user or terminal time needed to prepare and / or input data is substantial
and increases rapidly with the complexity of the object being modeled.
•The CPU time required to retrieve, edit, or update a wireframe model is usually small
compared to surface or solid models.
Disadvantages of Wireframe models
• These models are usually ambiguous representations of real objects and rely heavily on
human interpretation e.g. wireframe model of a box, where the model may represent more
than one object depending on which face(s) is assumed to exist.
•Models of complex designs having many edges may become very confusing and perhaps
even impossible to interpret.
•To overcome this confusion, lines can be hidden, dashed, or blanked.
•Another disadvantage is lack of visual coherence and information to determine the object
profile e.g. representation of a hole or curved portion of the object.
Disadvantages of Wireframe models (continued)
• Figure shows possible cases to display holes and / or curved surfaces of objects.
• In most systems the hole is displayed as two parallel circles separated by the hole length.
• Some systems may connect a line between the two circles on one side of the hole.
• In many cases, users add edges of the hole for appearance purposes at the drafting mode or may use
a cylindrical surface to represent the hole which introduces problem later on during the model cleanup
phase.
• Representing the intersection of plane faces with cylinders, cylinders with cylinders, or tangent
surfaces in general is usually a problem in wireframe modeling and requires user manipulations.
• Wireframe models are also considered lengthy or verbose when it comes to the amount of
defining data and command sequence required to construct them.
• For example, consider the creation of a simple box as a wireframe and as a solid.
• In the latter, the location of one corner, the length, width and height are the required input
while in the former the coordinates of atleast four corners of one face, the depth, and the
edge connectivity are required, considering the box as a two and a half dimensional object.
• In other words, both topological and geometrical data are needed to construct wireframe
models while solids require only geometrical data.
A wireframe model consists of the vertex table and the edge table. Each entry of the vertex table records a
vertex and its coordinate values, while each entry of the edge table has two components giving the two
incident vertices of that edge.
Edge Table
Edge Start End
Vertex Table # Vertex Vertex
Vertex # x y z 1 1 2
1 1 1 1 2 2 3
2 1 -1 1 3 3 4
3 -1 -1 1 4 4 1
4 -1 1 1 5 5 6
5 1 1 -1 6 6 7
6 1 -1 -1 7 7 8
7 -1 -1 -1 8 8 5
8 -1 1 -1 9 1 5
10 2 6
11 3 7
12 4 8
• From an application and engineering point of view, wireframe models are of limited use.
Unless the object is two and a half dimensional, volume and mass properties, NC tool path
generation, cross-sectioning, and interference directions cannot be calculated.
• The model can however, be used in manual finite element modeling and tolerance analysis.
Wireframe entities
• All CAD/CAM systems provide users with basic wireframe entities which can be divided into
analytic and synthetic entities.
• Analytic entities are points, lines, arcs and circles, fillets and chamfers and conics (ellipses,
parabolas and hyperbolas).
• Synthetic entities include various types of spline (cubic spline, B-spline, beta-spline) and
Bezier curves.
• Table in the next slide shows the common methods utilized by CAD/CAM systems to create
wireframe entities.
Methods of defining points
Methods of defining points (continued)
Methods of defining lines
Methods of defining arcs and circles
Methods of defining ellipses and parabolas
Methods of defining synthetic curves
Curve representation
• Many applications (automotive and aerospace industries) require other than general curves to
meet various shape constraints (continuity and / or curvature).
• A geometric description of curves defining an object can be tackled in several ways.
• A curve can be described by arrays of coordinate data or by an analytic equation.
• The coordinate array method is impractical as the storage required can be execessively large and
the computation to transform the data from one form to another is cumbersome.
• In addition, the exact shape of the curve is not known, therefore impairing the exact computations
such as intersection of curves and physical properties of objects (e.g. volume calculations).
• From a design point of view, it becomes difficult to redesign shapes of existing objects via the
coordinate array method.
• Analytic equations of curves provide designers with information such as the effect of data points
on curve behavior, control, continuity and curvature.
Curve representation (continued)
• The treatment of curves in computer graphics and CAD/CAM is different from that in analytic
geometry.
• Curves describing engineering objects are generally smooth and well behaved.
• In addition, not every available form of curve equation is efficient to use in CAD/CAM software due
to either computation or programming problems e.g. a curve equation that results in a division by
zero while calculating the curve slope causes overflow and errors in calculation.
• Similarly if intersection of two curves is to be found by solving their two equations numerically, the
forms of the equations may be inadequate to program due to known problems with numerical
solutions.
• In addition considering that most design data of objects are available in a discrete form, mainly key
points, the curve equation should be able to accept points and / or tangent values as input from
the designer.
• Curves can be described mathematically or nonparametric or parametric equations.
• Nonparametric equations can be explicit or implicit.
• For a nonparametric curve, the coordinates y and z of a point on the curve are expressed as two
separate functions of the third coordinate x as the independent variable (see equation below).
• This curve representation is known as nonparametric explicit form.
• If the coordinates x, y and z are related together by two functions (see equation below), a
nonparametric implicit form results.
• For parametric curve, on the other hand, a parameter is introduced and the coordinates x, y and z are
expressed a functions of this parameter. (see equation below)
• Explicit nonparametric representation of a general three dimensional curve takes the form:
• Where P is the position vector of point P as shown in Fig. below.
• This form cannot be used to represent closed (e.g. circles) or multivalued curves (e.g.
parabolas).
• The implicit nonparametric representation can solve this problem and is given by the
intersection of two surfaces as
• However the equation must be solved to find its roots (y and z values) if a certain value of x is
given. This may be inconvenient and lengthy.
• Other limitations of nonparametric representations of curves are:

– If the slope of the curve at a point is vertical or near vertical, its value becomes infinity or very large, a difficult
condition to deal with both computationally and programming-wise.
– Shapes of most engineering objects are intrinsically independent of any coordinate system. What determines
the shape of an object is the relationship between its data points themselves and not between these points
and some arbitrary coordinate system.
– If the curve is to be displayed as a series of points or straight line segments, the computations involved could
be extensive.
• Parametric representation of curves overcomes all of the above difficulties.
• It allows closed and multiple-valued functions to be easily defined and replaces the use of
slopes with that of tangent vectors.
• In the case of commonly used curves such as conics and cubics, these equations are
polynomials rather than equations involving roots.
• Hence the parametric form is not only more general but it also well suited to computations
and display.
• In addition, this form has properties that are attractive to CAD/CAM and the interactive
environment.
• In parametric form, each point on a curve is expressed as a function of a parameter u.
• The parameter acts as a local coordinate for points on the curve.
• The parametric equation for a three dimensional curve in space takes the following vector form:
• The above equation implies that the coordinates of a point on the curve are the components of its
position vector.
• It is a one to one mapping from the parametric space (euclidean space E1 in u values) to the Cartesian
space (E3 in x, y, z values) as shown.
• The parametric curve is bounded by two parametric values umin and umax. It is however
convinient to normalize the parametric variable u to have the limits 0 and 1. The positive
sense on the curve is the sense in which u increases.
• The parametric form as given by the following equation facilitates many of the useful related
computations ion geometric modeling.
•To check whether a given point lies on the curve or not reduces to finding the corresponding
u values and checking whether that value lies in the stated u range.
•Points on the curve can be computed by substituting the proper parametric values into the
above equation.
•Geometric transformations can be performed directly on the parametric equations.
•Parametric geometry can be easily expressed in terms of vectors and matrices which
enables the use of simple computation techniques to solve complex analytical geometry
problems.
• To evaluate the slope of a parametric curve at an arbitrary point on it, the concept of the
tangent vector must be introduced.
• As shown in Fig., the tangent vector is defined as vector P´(u) in the Cartesian space such
that
•Substituting the parametric equation for a three dimensional curve in the above equation
yields the components of the tangent vector in the parameter space as
where x´(u), y´(u) and z´(u) are the first parametric derivatives (with respect
to u) of the position vector components x(u), y(u) and z(u) respectively.
•The slopes of the curve are given by the ratios of the components of the tangent
vector:
•The slopes of the curve are given by the ratios of the components of the tangent
vector:
•The tangent vector has the same direction as the tangent to the curve – hence the
name “tangent vector”.
•The magnitude of the vector is given by
and the direction cosines of the vector are given by
where is the unit vector with Cartesian space components nx, ny and nz.
•The magnitude of the tangent vectors at the two ends of a curve affects its shape
and can be used to control it.
• There are two categories of curves that can be represented parametrically: analytic and
synthetic.
• Analytic curves are defined as those that can be described by analytic equations such as
lines, circles and conics.
• Synthetic curves are ones that are described by a set of data points (control points) such as
spline and Bezier curves.
• Parametric polynomials usually fit the control points.
• While analytic curves provide very compact forms to represent shapes and simplify the
computation of related properties such as areas and volumes, they are not attractive to deal
with interactively.
• Alternatively, synthetic curves provide designers with greater flexibility and control of a curve
shape by changing the positions of the control points.
• CAD software may be perceived as an application program supported by a graphics system
as shown in Fig.
• The graphics system performs all related graphics techniques.
• In the actual source code of the application program, the graphics system is embedded in the
form of subroutine calls.
• The graphics system is divided into two parts: the kernel (core system), which is hardware
independent and the device handler/driver, which is hardware dependent.
• The kernel system acts as a buffer between the application program and the specific
hardware to ensure the independence and portability of the program.
• At interface A in the Fig., the application program calls the standard functions and
subroutines provided by the kernel system through what is called language bindings.
• These functions and subroutines in turn calls the device handler / driver functions and
subroutines at the interface B to complete the task required by the application program.
Data Structure
• A data structure is defined as a set of data items or elements that are related to each other by
a set of relations. Applying these relations to the elements of the set results in a meaningful
object.
• From a CAD/CAM point of view, a data structure is scheme, logic or a sequence of steps
developed to achieve a certain graphics, non-graphics and / or a programming goal.
• Consider the object shown in Fig.

Data Structure (continued)
• Three different types of data structures have been identified to construct the object.
• They are based on edges, vertices or blocks.
• The set of edges, vertices or blocks is the set of

data items for each type and edges, vertices or
blocks are the data items themselves.
• Furthermore the connectivity vertices for the first

type, the edge information for the second and the
set operators for the third form the set of relations
required by each type.
• E.g. 1,A&B in Fig (b) indicates that vertex 1 is

shared by edges A and B while in Fig. (c) A,1&4
indicates that edge A has the two vertices 1 and
4.
Database
• The term database is commonly defined as an organized collection of graphics and nongraphics data
stored on secondary storage in the computer. It could therefore be viewed as the art of storing or the
implementation of data structure into the computer. Hence it is repository for stored data.
• A decison on data structure has to be made first, followed by a choice of a database to implement such
as structure.
• There may exist more than one database to implement a structure.
• The objective of a database is to collect and maintain data in a central storage so that it will be
available for operations and decision making.
• The CAD/CAM databases must be able to store pictorial data in addition to textual and alphanumeric
data typically stored in conventional databases.
• Popular database models are: Relational database, Hierarchical database, Network database, and
Object oriented database
Relational database
• Data is stored in tables, called relations, that are related to each other.
• The relations are stored in files which can be accessed sequentially or in a random access mode.
• e.g. The relations needed to describe the object are shown in Fig. The object is represented by three
relations POINT, LINE/CURVE and SURFACE.
• One of the disadvantages of the relational database is that it requires substantial sorting which might
result in slowing the system response to user commands.
Hierarchical database
• In this model, data is represented by a tree structure. The top of the tree is usually known as the “root” and the
superiority, or hierarchy, of the tree levels relative to each other descends from the root down.
• Fig. shows a hierarchical database of the object.
• Four levels are required to represent the object completely.
• One of the drawbacks of hierarchical approach is the asymmetry of the tree structure, which forces database
programmers to devote time and effort to solving problems, introduced by the hierarchical approach, which are not
intrinsic to the object modeling itself.
Network database
• In network approach permits modeling of many to many correspondence more directly than the
hierarchical approaches.
• Fig. shows a network database of the object.
• The prime disadvantage of the network approach is its undue complexity both in the database structure
itself and in the associated programming of it.
Hierarchical database
• In this model, data is represented by a tree structure. The top of the tree is usually known as the “root” and the
superiority, or hierarchy, of the tree levels relative to each other descends from the root down.
• This type of relationship is called superior/subordinate relationship or is also known as parent/child relationship.
• This data structure has one to one and one to many relationship between entities i.e. a parent record can have many
child records but a child record can have only one parent record; a child can turn into a parent and can have several
children.
• In hierarchical database, the records form the nodes and the fields form branches of the tree.
• Fig. shows a hierarchical database of the object.
• Four levels are required to represent the object completely.

Hierarchical database (continued)
Advantages
– It is simple straight forward method of implementing record relationship.
– It is useful when there is some hierarchical relationship in the database.
Disadvantages
– A child record cannot be added if there is no corresponding record as well as it is not possible to insert a new
dependent if its superior does not exist.
– Deletion operation leads to loss of much data.
– A parent record cannot be deleted if a child record exists. (before deleting a parent record, it is necessary to first
delete the child record)
– Updating operation in hierarchical model is difficult.
– The tree structure is not symmetric.
– All the relationships that occur in the real world cannot be depicted (like many to many).
– It is useful only when there is some hierarchical relationship in the database.

Network database
• The network approach permits modeling of many to many correspondence more directly than the
hierarchical approaches.
• It is similar to hierarchical model except that an entity can have more than one parent.
• Fig. shows a network database of the object.

Network database (continued)
Advantages
– It is an improvement over the hierarchical database and can be used to represent many to
many relationships.
– Searching a record is easy since there are multiple paths available.
Disadvantages
– All record are maintained using pointers and hence the whole database becomes very
complex.
– Insertion, deletion, updating operations would require pointer adjustments.

Relational database
• Data is stored in tables, called relations, that are related to each other.
• The relations are stored in files which can be accessed sequentially or in a random access
mode.
• e.g. The relations needed to describe the object are shown in Fig. The object is represented
by three relations POINT, LINE/CURVE and SURFACE.
Relational database (continued)
Advantages:
– Very effective for small databases.
– Data processing is easy and data modeling is flexible.
– Reduced data redundancy.
– Network and hierarchical database use pointers to implement the record relationships but in relational database
the record relationship is implemented using primary key or composite key. Hence it is simple and represents
logical relation among the data items rather than the physical relationships.
Disadvantages
– It supports limited number of data types such as int, float, char, text, etc.
– In some case it is impossible to represent the data in table form.
– Itrequires substantial sorting, which may slow down the system’s response to users commands.
Object oriented database
• Unlike conventional database processing, CAD/CAM applications require object oriented accessing and
manipulation i.e. units of retrieval and storage are design objects and not individual records in files.
• These objects are nothing but components having attributes and behavior. Every object will have data
structures called attributes and behaviors called operations.
• For example, the object bicycle has attributes like gear, pedal, wheels, etc. behaviour like braking,
accelerating, changing gears, etc.
• These design objects also form the basis for ensuring database integrity upon the insertion, deletion, or
modification of component objects.
• The object oriented model should be able to capture all the relevant semantics of objects.
• This in turn results in a rich, well integrated and complete database readily accessible for applications.
• Object oriented database models include the entity relationship model, complex object representation, and
abstract data model.
Object oriented database (continued)
• The abstract data model is close to solid modeling databases.
• It employs abstract objects as primitives in the design of database. Vertices, edges are Vertices, edges are
the attributes
the attributes
• Fig. shows an example of this database. Primitives are constructed from input data and form the
lowest field or record of storage in the database.
Advantages over Relational DBMS
– Object do not require assembly and disassembly saving coding time and execution time to
assemble/disassemble objects.
– Less code required when applications are object oriented.
Disadvantages as compared to Relational DBMS
– Lower efficiency when data is simple and relationships are simple.
– Relational tables are simpler.
• Object oriented databases seem to be ideal for CAD/CAM applications.
• Hybrid database models may be also useful.

• The following are some of the functional requirements and specifications that CAD/CAM
databases must support:
• Multiple engineering applications from conceptual design to manufacturing operations.
• Dynamic modification and extension of the database and its associativity.
• The iterative nature of design. CAD/CAM database management systems must support the
tentative, iterative and evolutionary nature of the design process.
• Design versions and level of detail. CAD databases must provide a capability for storage and
management of multiple design solutions that may exist for a particular design. There is seldom a
unique solution to a design problem and there may exist several optimal solutions.
• Concurrent and multiple users must be supported from the database. Large design projects sually
involve multiple designers working simultaneously on multiple aspects of a project.
• Temporary database support. Due to iterative nature of design, earlier generated data may not be
committed to the database until the design process is completed.
• Free design sequence. The database system should not impose constraints on the designer to
follow because different designs require different sequences.
• Easy access. Application programs requiring data from a CAD/CAM database should not require
extensive knowledge of the database structure to extract the data needed. This is important in
customizing CAD/CAM systems for specific design and manufacturing procedures.
Database Management System (DBMS)
• A DBMS is defined as software that allows access to use and / or modify data stored in a
database.
• The DBMS forms a layer of software between the physical database itself (i.e. stored data)
and the users of this database as shown in Fig.
Database Management System (DBMS) (continued)
• DBMS protects the database from user’s abuse.
• It also shields the users from having to deal with hardware level details by interpreting their
input commands and requests from the database.
• In general, a DBMS is responsible for all database-related activities such as creating files,
checking for illegal users of the database and synchronizing user access to the database.
• DBMSs designed for commercial business systems are too slow for CAD/CAM. The data
handled by the commercial realm is mostly alphanumeric and the objects described are
usually not very complex.
• The handling of graphics data is an area where the conventional DBMSs tend to break down
under the shear volume of data and the demand for quick display.
• A DBMS is directly related to the database model it is supposed to manage.

Database Management System (DBMS) (continued)
• The requirements of a DBMS for CAD/CAM are fundamentally different from those required
by commercial data processing applications.
• Therefore, current DBMS and techniques that are originally designed to support business
data processing are not directly applicable to CAD/CAM databases.
• The CAD/CAM databases must support complex relationships between data items in contrast
to business databases that are designed for record keeping and modeling of relatively simple
relationships between data types.
• Another fundamental difference is that business databases are relatively stable over time.
However, CAD/CAM databases must reflect the iterative nature of design and manufacturing.
• Object oriented databases and their related DBMSs seem to be ideal for CAD/CAM and can
result in a significant improvement of CAD/CAM systems.
Software modules
Operating System (OS) Module
• This module provides the users with utility and system commands that deal with their
accounts and files.
• Typical functions such as file manipulations (delete, copy, rename, etc.), managing
directories and subdirectories using text editors, programming and accounts setup are
supported by the OS module.
• Files that are generated in the user’s CAD/CAM account by the OS can be classified into two
groups: first group including all conventional files (text files) and second group including
graphics related files ( a model geometry and its shaded images are stored in these files).
Software modules (continued)
Graphics Module
• This module provides users with various functions to perform geometric modeling and
construction, editing and manipulation of existing geometry, drafting and documentation.
• The typical graphics operations that users can engage in are model creation, documentation
and plotting.
Solid model of a bicycle hub
Solid model of
Typical Surface models a Wine Glass Solid Model of a
universal joint
Applications Module
• The creation of a geometric model of an object represents a means and not a goal to
engineers. The ultimate goal is to be able to utilize the model for design and manufacturing
purposes.
• Mechanical applications include mass property calculations, assembly analysis, tolerance

analysis, sheet metal design, finite element modeling and analysis, mechanisms analysis,
animation techniques and simulation and analysis of plastic injection molding and so on.
• Manufacturing applications include process planning, NC, CIM, robot simulation and group
technology.
NC tool path verification
Stress contours
Robot simulation via

offline programming
Applications Module (continued)
• Manufacturing applications include process planning, NC, CIM, robot simulation and group
technology.
Programming Module
• Typically this module provides the users with system dependent and standard programming
languages.
• The former is provided for graphics purposes while the latter is used for analysis and
calculations.
Communications Module
• This module is crucial if integration is to be achieved between the CAD/CAM system, other
computer systems and manufacturing facilities.
• It is common to network the system to transfer the CAD database of a model for analysis
purposes or to transfer its CAM database to shop floor for production.
• This module also serves the purpose of translating databases between CAD/CAM systems
using graphics standards such as IGES, STEP.
Modeling
• A geometric model is defined as the complete representation of an object that includes both its
graphical and nongraphical information.
• Objects can be classified into three types from a geometric construction point of view: two and half
dimensional, three dimensional or a combination of both.
•As Fig. shows, two and a half dimensional objects
are classified to have uniform cross sections and
thicknesses in directions perpendicular to the planes
of the cross sections.
•Constructing such as object via wireframe modeling

requires only constructing the proper entities (faces),
projecting them along proper directions, by the
thickness value and then creating proper edges
along these directions.
Modeling (continued)
• The construction of a true three dimensional object requires the coordinate input of key points
and then connecting them with proper types of entities.
Parametric representation of Synthetic Curves
• Analytic curves are usually not sufficient to meet geometric design requirements of
mechanical parts.
• Products such as car bodies, ship hulls, airplane fuselage and wings, propeller blades, shoe
insoles and bottles are a few examples that require free form or synthetic curves and
surfaces.
• The need for synthetic curves in design arises on two occasions: when a curve is
represented by a collection of measured data points and when a existing curve must change
to meet new design requirements.
• In the latter case, the designer would need a curve representation that is directly related to
the data points and is flexible enough to bend, twist, or change the curve shape by changing
one or more data points.
• Data points are usually called control points and the curve itself is called an interpolant if it
passes through all the data points.
Parametric representation of Synthetic Curves (continued)
• Mathematically synthetic curves represent a curve-fitting problem to construct a smooth curve
that passes through given data points. Therefore, polynomials are the typical forms of these
curves.
• Various continuity requirements can be specified at the data points to various degrees of
smoothness of the resulting curve.
• The order of continuity becomes important when a complex curve is modeled by several
curve segments pieced together end to end.
• Zero-order continuity (C0) yields a position continuous curve.
• First (C1) – and the second (C2) – order continuities imply slope and curvature continuous
curves respectively.
• A C1 curve is the minimum acceptable curve for engineering design.

• Fig. shows a geometrical interpretation of these orders of continuity.
• A cubic polynomial is the minimum order

polynomial that can guarantee the generation
of C0, C1 and C2 curves.
• Higher degree polynomials are not commonly

used in CAD/CAM because they tend to
oscillate about control points, are
computationally inconvenient, and are
uneconomical of storing curve and surface
representations in the computer.
• The type of input data and its influence on the control of the resulting synthetic curve
determine the use and effectiveness of the curve in design.
• For example, curve segments that require positions of control points and / or tangent vectors
at these points are easier to deal with and gather data for than those that might require
curvature information.
• Also the designer may prefer to control the shape of the curve locally instead of globally by
the changing the control point(s).
• If changing a control point results in changing the curve locally in the vicinity of that point,
local control of the curve is achieved; otherwise global control results.
• Major CAD/CAM systems provide three types of synthetic curves: Hermite cubic spline,
Bezier and B-spline curves.
• The cubic spline curve passes through the data points and therefore is an interpolant.
• Bezier and B-spline curves in general approximate the data points, that is, they do not pass
through them.
• Both the cubic spline and Bezier curves have a first order continuity and the B-spline has a
second order continuity.
Hermite cubic splines
• Parametric spline curves are defined as piecewise polynomial curves with a certain order of
continuity.
• A polyniomial of degree N has continuity of derivatives of order (N-1).
• Parametric cubic splines are used to interpolate to given data, not to design free form curves
as Bezier and B-spline curves.
• The Hermite form of cubic spline is determined by defining positions and tangent vectors at
the data points.
• The most commonly used spline curve is a three dimensional planar curve.
• For the planar curve, the XY plane of the current WCS is typically used to define the plane of
the data points and consequently the plane of the curve.
• The WCS then serves as the local coordinate system, of the spline.
Hermite cubic splines (continued)
• The parametric cubic spline (or cubic spline) connects two data (end) points and utilizes a
cubic equation.
• Therefore four conditions are required to determine the coefficients of the equation.
• When these are the positions of the two end points and the two tangent vectors at the points,
a Hermite cubic spline results.
• Thus the Hermite cubic spline is considered as one form of the general parametric cubic
spline.
• The parametric equation of a cubic spline is given by
where u is the parameter and Ci are the polynomial (also called algebraic) coefficients.
• In scalar form this equation is written as
• In an expanded vector form, the equation can be written as
• This equation can be also written in a matrix form as
where U = [u3 u2 u 1]T and C = [C3 C2 C1 C0]T.
• C is called the coefficients vector.

• The tangent vector to the curve at any point is given by differentiating the equation
w.r.t. u to give
• In order to find the coefficients Ci, consider the cubic spline

curve with the two end points P0 and P1 shown in Fig.
• Applying the boundary conditions (P0,P0´ at u = 0 and P1, P1´

at u = 1), the above equations give
• Solving the four equations simultaneously for the coefficients gives
• Substituting the above equations into the equation

and rearranging gives
are called geometric coefficients.

• The tangent vector becomes
• The functions in u in the above equations are called blending functions.
• The first two functions blend P0 and P1 and the second two blend P0´ and P1´ to produce
the left-hand side in each equation.
• The above equation can be written in a matrix form as
where [MH] is the Hermite matrix and V is the geometry (or boundary conditions) vector.
Both are given by

• Comparing the above equations show that
• Similarly it can be written

• The above equation describes the cubic spline curve in terms of its two end points and their
tangent vectors.
• The equation shows that the curve passes through the end points (u=0 and 1).
• It further shows that the curve’s shape can be controlled by changing its end points or its
tangent vectors.
• If two end points P0 and P1 are fixed in space, the designer can control the shape of the
spline by changing either their magnitudes or the directions of the tangent vectors P0´ and P1´
• This equation can be used to plot a spline.Points can be generated on the spline for different
values of u between 0 and 1. These points are then transformed to the MCS for display or
plotting purposes.
• This equation is for one cubic spline segment.
• It can be generated for any two adjacent spline segments of a spline curve that are to fit a
given number of data points.
• This introduces the problem of blending or joining cubic spline segments which can be stated
as follows.
• Given a set of points P0, P1, …. Pn-1 and the two end tangent vectors P0´ and Pn-1´ connect
the points with a cubic spline curve.
• The spline curve is created as a blend of spline segments connecting the set of points
starting from P0 and ending at Pn-1.
• Tangent vectors at the intermediate points P1 through Pn-2 are needed to compute these
segments.
• To eliminate the need for these vectors, the

continuity of curvature at these points can be
imposed.
• To illustrate this, consider eliminating P1´

between the first two segments that connect
points P0, P1 and P2.
• For curvature continuity, we can write

where the subscripts of u refer to the segment number.
Differentiating the equation
substituting the above result, we obtain

How did we got here ???
• For more than two segments, a matrix equation
can result from repeating this procedure, which
can be solved for the intermediate tangent
vectors in terms of the data points and the two
end tangent vectors P0´ and Pn-1´.
• Thus the geometric information of a cubic spline database consists of the set of the data
points and the two end tangent vectors.
• Fig. below shows the control aspects of the spline curve.

Bezier curves
• Cubic splines are based on interpolation techniques and curves resulting from these
techniques pass through the given points.
• Another alternative to create curves is to use approximation techniques which produce

curves that do not pass through the given data points but instead these points are used to
control the shape of the resulting curves.
• Bezier and B-spline curves are examples based on approximation techniques.
• The major differences between Bezier curve and the cubic spline curve are:
– The shape of Bezier curve is controlled by its defining points only. First derivatives are not used in the curve
development as in case of cubic spline. This allows the designer a much better feel for the relationship
between input points and output curve.
– The order or degree of Bezier curve is variable and is related to the number of points defining it; n+1 points
define nth degree curve which permits higher order continuity. This is not the case for cubic splines where the
degree is always cubic for a spline segment.
– The Bezier curve is smoother than the cubic spline because it has higher order derivatives.
Bezier curves (continued)
• The Bezier curve is defined in terms of the locations of n+1 points.
• These points are called data or control points. They form the vertices of what is called the
control or Bezier characteristic polygon which uniquely defines the curve shape as shown.
• Only the first and last control points or vertices of the polygon actually lie on the curve.
• The other vertices define the order, derivatives and shape of the curve.
• The curve is always tangent to the first and last polygon segment.
• In addition, the curve shape tends to follow the polygon shape.

• The figures show that the order of

defining the control points changes the
polygon definition which changes the
resulting curve shape consequently.
• The arrow depicted on each curve

shows its parameterization direction.
• Mathematically, for n+1 control points, the Bezier curve is defined by the following polynomial
of degree n:
where P(u) is any point on the curve and Pi is a control point.
Bi,n are the Bernstein polynomials.
• Thus the Bezier curve has a Bernstein basis.
• The Bernstein polynomial serves as the blending or basis function for the Bezier curve and is
given by
where C(n,i) is the binomial coefficient

• Utilizing above equations and observing that C(n,0) = C(n,n) = 1,
the equation can be expanded to give
• The characteristics of the Bezier curve are based on the properties of the Bernstein
polynomials and can be summarized as follows:
– The curve interpolates the first and last control points: that is, it passes through P0 and Pn if we
substitute u = 0 and 1 in the above equation.
– The curve is tangent to the first and last segments of the characteristic polygon. The rth
derivatives at the starting and ending points are given by respectively:
– Therefore, the first derivatives at the end points are
where (P1 – P0) and (Pn – Pn-1) define the first and last segments of the curve polygon.
Similarly, it can be shown that the second derivative at P0 is determined by P0 , P1 and P2 ;
or in general, the rth derivative at an end point is determined by its rth neighboring vertices.
– The curve is symmetric with respect to u and (1-u). This means that the sequence of control
points defining the curve can be reversed without changing the curve shape i.e. reversing the
direction of parameterization does not change the curve shape. This can be achieved by
substituting 1-u = v in the equation and noticing that C(n, i) = C (n, n – i). This is a result of the
fact that Bi,n and Bn-i,n(u) are symmetric if they are plotted as functions of u.
– The interpolation polynomial Bi,n(u) has a maximum value of C(n,i) (i/n)i (1-i/n)n-i occuring at
u=i/n which can be obtained from the equation d(Bi,n)/du = 0. This implies that each control
point is most influential on the curve shape at u = i/n. For example, for a cubic Bezier curve, P0 ,
P1, P2 and P3 are most influential when u = 0, 1/3, 2/3 and 1 respectively. Therefore, each
control point is weighed by its blending function for each u value.
– The curve shape can be modified by either changing one or more vertices of its polygon or by
keeping the polygon fixed and specifying multiple coincident points at a vertex, as shown in Fig.
In Fig(a), the vertex P2 is pulled to the new

position P2* and in Fig(b), P2 is assigned a
multiplicity k. The higher the multiplicity, the
more the curve is pulled towards P2.
– A closed Bezier curve can simply be generated by closing its characteristic polygon or choosing
P0 and Pn to be coincident. Fig. shows examples of closed curves.
– For any valid value of u, the sum of Bi,n functions associated with the control point is always
equal to unity for any degree of Bezier curve.
• Thus far, only one Bezier curve segment is considered.
• In practical applications, the need may arise to deal with composite curves where various curve
segments are blended or joined together.
• In these applications maintaining continuity of various orders between the segments might be desired.
• Fig. shows two curve segments defined by two sets of points P1, P2, P3, P4 and P4, P5, P6, P7 , P8.
• To achieve a zero-order (C0) continuity, it is sufficient to make one of the end control points of the
segments common e.g. P4 in Fig(a).
• To achieve a first order (C1) continuity, the end slope of one segment must be equal to the starting
slope of the next segment, i.e. the corresponding tangent vectors are related to each other by a
constant.
• This condition requires that the last segment of the first polygon and the first segment of the second
polygon form a straight line.
• With regards to Fig(b), the three points P3, P4 and P5 must be collinear.
• Using the equations, we can write

• A desirable property for any curve defined by a polygon such as the Bezier curve is the convex hull
property.
• This property relates the curve to its characteristic polygon.
• A curve is said to have the convex hull property if it lies entirely within the convex hull defined by the
polygon vertices.
• In a plane, the convex hull is a closed polygon and in three dimensions it is a polyhedron.
• The shaded area shown in Fig. defines the convex hull of a Bezier curve.
• The hull is formed by connecting the vertices of the characteristic polygon.

• Curves that possess convex hull property enjoy some important consequences.
• If the polygon defining a curve segment degenerates to a straight line, the resulting segment must be
linear.
• Thus a Bezier curve may have locally linear segments embedded in it, which is a useful design feature.
• Also the size of the convex hull is an upper bound on the size of the curve itself; i.e. the curve always
lies inside its convex hull. This a useful property for graphics functions such as displaying or clipping the
curve.
• For example, instead of testing the curve itself for clipping, the convex hull is tested first and only if it
intersects the display window boundaries should the curve itself be examined.
• A third consequence of the convex hull property is that the curve never oscillates wildly away from its
defining control points because the curve is guaranteed to lie within its convex hull.
• The database of a Bezier curve includes the coordinates of the control points defining its polygon
stored in the same order as input by the user.
• Other information whuich may obviously be stored include layer colour, name, font and line width of the
curve.
• While the Bezier curve seems to be superior to a cubic spline curve, it still has some disadvantages.
• First the curve does not pass through the control points which may be inconvenient to some designers.
• Second, the curve lacks local control. It only has the global control nature.
• If one control point is changed, the whole curve changes. Therefore, the designer cannot selectively
change parts of the curve.
B-spline curves
• B-spline curves provide yet another effective method, besides that of Bezier curve, of generating curves
by polygons.
• In addition to sharing most of the characteristics of Bezier curves they enjoy some other unique
advanrages.
• They provide local control of the curve shape as opposed to global control by using a special set of
blending functions that provide local influence.
• They also provide the ability to add control points without increasing the degree of the curve.
• In contrast to Bezier curves, the theory of B-spline curves separates the degree of the resulting curve
from the number of the given control points.
• While four control points can always produce a cubic Bezier curve, they can generate a linear,
quadratic or cubic B-spline curve.
• This flexibility in the degree of the resulting curve is achieved by choosing the basis (blending) functions
of B-spline curves with an additional degree of freedom that does not exist in Bernstein polynomials.
• These basis functions are the B-splines – thus the name B-spline curves.
B-spline curves
• B-spline curves provide yet another effective method, besides that of Bezier curve, of generating curves
by polygons.
• In addition to sharing most of the characteristics of Bezier curves they enjoy some other unique
advantages.
• They provide local control of the curve shape as opposed to global control by using a special set of
blending functions that provide local influence.
• They also provide the ability to add control points without increasing the degree of the curve.
• In contrast to Bezier curves, the theory of B-spline curves separates the degree of the resulting curve
from the number of the given control points.
• While four control points can always produce a cubic Bezier curve, they can generate a linear,
quadratic or cubic B-spline curve.
• This flexibility in the degree of the resulting curve is achieved by choosing the basis (blending) functions
of B-spline curves with an additional degree of freedom that does not exist in Bernstein polynomials.
• These basis functions are the B-splines – thus the name B-spline curves.
B-spline curves (continued)
• Similar to Bezier curves, the B-spline curve defined by n+1 control points Pi is given by
Ni,k(u) are the B-spline functions.
• Thus B-spline curves have a B-spline basis.
• The control points (sometimes called deBoor points) form the vertices of the control or deBoor polygon.
• There are two major differences with the Bezier curve equation.
• First the parameter k controls the degree (k-1) of the resulting B-spline curve and is usually
independent of the number of control points except as restricted as shown below.
• Second the maximum limit of the parameter u is no longer unity as it was so chosen arbitrarily for
Bezier curves.
• The B-spline function has the following properties:

• The B-spline function has the following properties:
• The first property ensures that the relationship between the curve and its defining control points is
invariant under affine transformations.
• The second property guarantees that the curve segment lies completely within the convex hull of Pi.
• The third property indicates that each segment of a B-spline curve is influenced by only k control points
or each control point affects only k curve segments.
• It is useful to notice that the Bernstein polynomial Bi,n(u) has the same first two properties mentioned
above.
• The B-spline function also has the property of recursion which is defined as
• Choose 0/0 = 0 if the denominators in the above equation becomes zero.
• Because Ni,1 is a constant for k = 1, a general value of k produces a polynomial in u of degree (k-1)
(see above equation) and therefore a curve of order k and degree (k-1).
• The ui are the parametric knots or knot values.
• These values form a sequence of nondecreasing integers called knot vector.
• The values of the ui depend on whether the B-spline curve is an open (nonperiodic) or closed (periodic)
curve.
• For an open curve, they are given by
• The above relation shows that (n+ k+`1) knots are needed to create a (k-1) degree curve defined by
(n+1) control points.
• These knots are evenly spaced over the range of u with unit separation (∆u=1) between noncoincident
knots.
• Multiple coincident knots for certain values of u may exist.

• While the degree of the resulting B-spline curve is controlled by k, the range of the parameter u as
given by the above equation implies that there is a limit on k that is determined by the number of the
given control points.
• This limit is found by requiring the upper bound in the above equation to be greater than the lower
bound for the u range to be valid i.e.
n–k+2>0
• This relation requires that a minimum of two, three and four control points are required to define a
linear, quadratic and cubic B-spline curve respectively.
• The characteristics of B-spline curves that are useful in design can be summarized as follows:
– The local control of the curve can be achieved by changing the position of a control point, using multiple
control points by placing several points at the same location, or by choosing a different degree (k-1).
– As mentioned the local control for a cubic B-spline curve by moving P3 to P3* and P3**. The four curve
segments surrounding P2 change only.
– A nonperiodic B-spline curve passes through the first and last control points P0 and Pn+1 and is tangent to the
first (P1-P0) and last (Pn+1 – Pn) segments of the control polygon, similar to the Bezier curve, as shown in Fig.
– Increasing the degree of the curve tightens it.
– In general, the less the degree, the closer the curve gets to the control points, as shown in Fig.
– When k=1, a zero degree curve results. The curve then becomes the control points themselves.
– When k=2, the curve becomes the polygon segments themselves.
– A second degree curve is always tangent to the midpoints of all the internal polygon segments (see Fig.). This
is not the case for other degrees.
– If k equals the number of control points (n+1), then the resulting B-spline curve becomes a Bezier curve (see
Fig.). In this case, the range of u becomes zero to one as expected.
– Multiple control points induce regions of high curvature of a B-spline curve. This is useful when creating
sharp corners in the curve (see Fig.). This effect is equivalent to saying that the curve is pulled more towards a
control point by increasing its multiplicity.
– Increasing the degree of the curve makes it more difficult to control and to calculate accurately.
– Therefore a cubic B-spline is sufficient for a large number of applications.

• Thus far, open or nonperiodic B-spline curves have been discussed. The same theory can be extended
to cover closed or periodic B-spline curves.
• The only difference between open and closed curves is in the choice of the knots and the basis
functions.
• The following equations determine the knots and the spacing between them for open curves.
• Closed curves utilize periodic B-spline functions as their basis with knots at the integers.
• Closed curves utilize periodic B-spline functions as their
basis with knots at the integers.
• These basis functions are cyclic translates of a single

canonical function with a period (interval) of k for
support.
• For example, for a closed B-spline curve of order 2

(k=2) or a degree 1 (k-1), the basis function is linear,
has a nonzero value in the interval (0,2) only, and has a
maximum value of 1 at u=1, as shown in Fig. The knot
vector in this case is [0 1 2].
• Quadratic and cubic spline curves have quadratic and cubic basis functions with intervals of (0,3) and
(0,4) and knot vectors of [0 1 2 3] and [0 1 2 3 4] respectively.
• The closed B-spline curve of degree (k-1) or order k defined by (n+1) control points is given by the
following equation as the open curve.
• However, for the closed curves, the equations become
• The mod(n+1) in the above equation is the modulo function. It is defined as

• For example, 3.5 mod 6 = 3.5, 6 mod 6 = 0 and 7 mod 6 = 1.
• The mod function enables the periodic (cyclic) translation [mod(n+1)] of the canonical basis function
N0,k . N0,k is the same as for open curves and can be calculated using the equations
• Like open curves, closed B-spline curves enjoy the properties of partition of unity, positivity, local
support and continuity.
• They also share the same characteristics of the open curves except that they do not pass through the
first and last control points and are not tangent to the first and last segments of the control polygon.
• In representing closed curves, closed polygons are used where the first and last control points are
connected by a polygon segment.
• It should be noticed that a closed B-spline curve cannot be generated by simply using an open curve
with the first and last control points being the same (coincident). The resulting curve is only C0
continuous as shown in Fig.
• Only if the first and last segments of the polygon are collinear does a C1 continuous curve result as in a
Bezier curve.
• So the database of a B-spline curve includes the type of curve (open or closed), its order k or degree
(k-1) and the coordinates of the control points defining its polygon stored in the same order as input by
the user. Other information such as layer, colour, name, font and line width of the curve may be stored.
Mathematical representation of surfaces
• Shape design and representation of complex objects such as car body, ship hull or airplane bodies as
castings cannot be achieved utilizing wireframe modeling.
• In such cases, surface modeling must be utilized to describe objects precisely and accurately.
• Due to richness of information of surface models, they are used in various applications such as
calculating mass properties, checking for interference between mating parts, generating cross
sectioned views, generating finite element meshes and generating NC tool paths for continuous path
machining.
• Creating surfaces in general has some quantitative data such as a set of points and tangents and some
qualitative data such as intuition of the desired shape and smoothness.
• Surface formulation must provide the designer with the flexibility to use both types of data in a simple
form that is suitable for interactive use.
• Available surface techniques can interpolate or approximate the given hard data.
• Bezier surface is a form of approximation and the B-spline surface is a form of interpolation.
Mathematical representation of surfaces (continued)
• The choice of the surface form depends upon the application and on the manufacturing methods
needed to produce the surface.
• For example, the surface form used to model a car body may not be adequate to model a airplane
body.
• It is usually preferred to choose a surface that can be produced using three axis machining instead of
five axis machining to reduce the manufacturing cost.
• However, all surface forms must be easy to differentiate to determine surface tangents, normals and
curvatures. Polynomial functions are an obvious choice.
• Polynomials of higher order are not appropriate froma surface design point of view due to their large
number of coefficients which may make it difficult to control the resulting surface. For most practical
applications, cubic polynomials are sufficient.
• The most obvious and inefficient way to describe a surface is to list sufficient points on it.
• This approach is cumbersome and cannot be used to derive any surface properties.
• Instead it is common to employ some form of interpolation scheme and use fewer points.
• It is even more convenient if analytic forms of surfaces exist all the time.
• When analytic forms are not available, surfaces are defined in patches that are connected together
similarly to curves which can be defined in a piecewise manner.
• Surface creation on existing CAD/CAM systems usually requires wireframe entities as a start.
• A system might request two boundary entities (rails of the surface) to create ruled surface or might
require one entity (generator curve) to create a surface of revolution.
• All analytic and synthetic wireframe entities that we have discussed earlier can be used to generate
surfaces.
• In order to visualize surfaces on graphics display, a mesh m X n in size, is usually displayed. The mesh
size is controllable by the user.
Surface model
• A surface model of an object is a more complete and less ambiguous representation than its wireframe
model and is also richer in its associated geometric contents, which makes it more suitable for design
and manufacturing engineering applications.
• A surface model can be used, for example, to drive the cutter of a machine tool while a wireframe
model cannot.
• Surface modeling takes the modeling of an object one step further than wireframe models by providing
information on the surfaces connecting the object edges.
• Typically a surface model consists of wireframe entities that form the basis to create surface entities.
• Despite their similar look, there is a fundamental difference between surface and solid models. Surface
models define only the geometry of their corresponding objects. They store no information regarding
the topology of these objects.
• For example, if there are two surface entities that share a wireframe entity (edge), niether the surfaces
nor the entity store such information.
Surface model (continued)
• There is also a fundamental difference between creating surface and solid models.
• To create a surface model, the user begins by constructing wireframe entities and then connecting
them appropriately with the proper surface entities.
• For solids based on boundary representation, either faces, edges and vertices are created or solid
primitives are input which are converted internally by the software to faces, edges and vertices.
• Surface models have considerable advantages over wireframe models.
• They are less ambiguous.
• They provide hidden line and surface algorithms to add realism to the displayed geometry.
• From an application point of view, surface models can be utilized in volume and mass property
calculations, finite element modeling, NC path generation, cross-sectioning, and interference
detections.
• Surface models have a few disadvantages. Surface models are generally more complex and thus
require more terminal time and CPU time and computer storage to create than wireframe models.
Surface entities
• Similar to wireframe entities, CAD/CAM systems provide designers with both analytic and synthetic
surface entities.
• Analytic surface entities include plane surface, ruled surface, surface of revolution and tabulated
cylinder.
• Synthetic entities include the bicubic Hermite spline surface, B-spline surface, rectangular and
triangular Bezier patches, rectangular and triangular Coons patches and Gordon surface.
Plane surface
•This is the simplest surface. It requires three

noncoincident points to define an infinite plane.
•The plane surface can be used to generate cross-

sectional views by intersecting a surface model with
it, generate crosssections for mass property
calculations, or other similar applications where a
plane is needed.
Surface entities (continued)
Ruled (lofted) surface
•This is a linear surface. It interpolates linearly

between two boundary curves that define the surface
(rails).
•Rails can be any wireframe entity.
•This entity is ideal to represent surfaces that do not

have any twists or kinks.
Surface of revolution
•This is an axisymmetric surface that can model

axisymmetric objects.
•It is generated by rotating a planar wireframe entity

in space about the axis of symmetry a certain angle.
Tabulated cylinder
•This is a surface generated by translating a planar curve a certain
distance along a specified direction (axis of the cylinder) as shown.
•The plane of the curve is perpendicular to the axis of the cylinder.
•It is used to generate surfaces that have identical curved cross

sections.
Bezier surface
•This is a surface that approximates given input data.
•It is different from the previous surfaces in that it is a synthetic surface.
•Similarly to the Bezier curve, it does not pass through all given data
points.
•It is a general surface that permits, twists and kinks.
•The Bezier surface allows only global control of the surface.

B-spline surface
•This is a surface that can approximate or interpolate given
input data. It is a synthetic surface.
•It is a general surface like the Bezier surface but with the
advantage of permitting local control of the surface.
Coons Patch
•The above surfaces are used with either open boundaries

or given data points.
•The Coons patch is used to create a surface using curves

that form closed boundaries.
Fillet surface
•This a B-spline surface that blends two surfaces together.
•The two original surfaces may or may not be trimmed.

Offset surface
•Existing surfaces can be offset to create new ones identical in shape but may have different dimensions.
•It is a useful surface to use to speed up surface construction.
•For example, to create a hollow cylinde, the outer or inner cylinder can be created using a cylinder command and
the ther one can be created by an offset command.
•Offset surface command becomes very efficient to use if the original surface is a composite one.
•Fig. shows an offset surface.

Surface representation
• Surface description is usually related to machining requirements to manufacture the surface.
• The surface description must successfully drive a tool to generate its path.
• Surfaces can be described mathematically in 3 dimensional space by nonparametric and parametric

equations.
• There are several methods to fit nonparametric surfaces to a given set of data points. They fall into 2
categories.
• In the first, one equation is fitted to pass through all the

points while in the second the data points are used to
develop a series of surfaces patches that are connected
together with atleast position and first derivative continuity.
• The equation of the surface or surface patch is given by
where P is the position vector of a point on the surface as

shown in Fig.
Surface representation (continued)
• The natural form of the function f(x,y) for a surface to pass through all the given data points is a polynomial,
i.e.
where the surface is described by an XY grid of size (p+1) X (q+1) points.
• The nonparametric surface representation suffers from all the disadvantages, when compared with parametric
surface representation, that nonparametric curves suffer from when compared with parametric curves.
• However, nonparametric curves do have some advantages when it comes to solving surface intersection
problems.
• The parametric representation of a surface means a continuous, vector valued function P(u,v) of two variables
or parameters, u and v, where the variables are allowed to range over some connected region of the uv plane
and, as they do so, P(u,v) assumes every position on the surface.
• The function P(u,v) at certain u and v values is the
point on the surface at these values. The most
general way to describe the parametric equation
of a 3 dimensional curved surface in space is
• As with curves, the above equation gives the

coordinates of a point on the surface as the
components of its position vector.
• It uniquely maps the parametric space (E2 in u

and v values) to the Cartesian space (E3 in x, y
and z) as shown in Fig.
• The parametric values u and v are constrained to

intervals bounded by minimum and maximum
values. In most surfaces, these intervals are [0,1]
for both u and v.
• The equation
suggests that a general 3 dimensional surface can be modeled by

dividing it into an assembly of topological patches.
• A patch is considered the basic mathematical element to model a

composite surface.
• Fig. shows a 2 patch surface where the u and v values are [0,1].
• The topology of a patch may be rectangular or or triangular as

shown in Fig.
• Triangular patches add more flexibility in surface modeling

because they do not require ordered rectangular arrays of data
points to create the surface as the rectangular patches do.
• Both triangular and rectangular Coons and Bezier patches are

available.
Parametric representation of analytic surfaces
Plane surface
• The parametric equation of a plane can take

different forms depending on the given data.
• Consider first the case of a plane defined by three

points P0, P1 and P2 as shown in Fig.
• Assume that the point P0 defines u=0 and v=0 and

the vectors (P1 - P0 ) and (P2 – P1 ) define u and v
directions respectively.
• Assume also that the domain for u and v are [0,1].
• The position vector of any point P on the plane

can be now written as
Plane surface (continued)

• The tangent vectors at point P are
and the surface normal is
which is constant for any point on the plane.
• As for the curvature of the plane, it is equal to zero.
• Another case of constructing a plane surface is when the

surface passes through a point P0 and contains two directions
defined by the unit vectors as shown in Fig.
• Similar to the above case, the plane equation can be written as
• The equation assumes a plane of dimensions Lu and Lv that may be set to unity.

• The above two equations can be combined to provide the equation of a plane surface that passes through
two points P0 and P1 and is parallel to the unit vector . In this case, we can write
• The last case to be considered is for a plane that passes through a point P0 and is perpendicular to a given
direction .
• Fig. shows this case. The vector is normal to any vector in the plane.
Thus,
which is nonparametric equation of the plane surface.
• A parametric equation can be developed by using the above equation to

generate two points on the surface which can be used with P0.
•Planes that are perpendicular to the axes are special cases of the above equation. For example, in case of a
plane perpendicular to the X axis, is (1,0,0) and the plane equation is x=x0.

• A database structure of a plane surface can be seen to include its unit normal , a point on the plane
P0 and u and v axes.
• For example, if a plane passes through the points P0 (0,0,0) and P1(2,0,0) and P2(0,0,2) as shown in Fig.,
the verification of the plane surface entities shows the entity is a plane passing through P0 (0,0,0) and has
a unit normal of (0,-1,0).
• In addition, the u and v axes are defined by the coordinates (1,0,0) and (0,0,1) respectively.
Ruled surface
• A ruled surface is generated by joining corresponding points on two space curves (rails) G(u) and Q(u) by
straight lines (also called rulings or generators), as shown in Fig.
• The main characteristic of a ruled surface is that

there is atleast one straight line passing through
the point P(u,v) and lying entirely in the surface.
• In addition, every developable surface is a ruled

surface.
• Cones and cylinders are examples of ruled

surfaces and the plane surface is considered the
simplest of all ruled surfaces.
Ruled surface (continued)

• To develop parametric equation of a ruled surface, consider the ruling u = ui joining points Gi and Qi on the
rails G(u) and Q(u) respectively.
• The equation of the ruling becomes
where v is the parameter along the ruling.
• Generalizing for any ruling, the parametric equation of a ruled surface defined by two rails is
• Holding the u value constant in the above equation produces the rulings given by the last but one equation in
the v direction of the surface, while holding the v value constant yields curves in the u direction which are a
linear blend of the rails.
Ruled surface (continued)

• In fact, G(u) and Q(u) are P(u,0) and P(u,1) respectively.
• Therefore, the closer the value of v to zero, the greater the influence of G(u) and less the influence of Q(u)
on the v=constant curve.
• Similarly, the influence of Q(u) on the ruled surface geometry increases when the v value approaches
unity.
• The ruled surface can allow curvature only in the u direction of the surface provided that the rails have
curvatures.
• The surface curvature in the v direction (along the rulings) is zero and thus a ruled surface cannot be used
to model surface patches that have curvatures in two directions.
Surface of revolution
• The rotation of a planar curve an angle ν about an axis of
rotation creates a circle (if ν = 360) for each point on the
curve whose center lies on the axis of rotation and whose
radius rz(u) is variable, as shown in Fig.
• The planar curve and the circles are called the profile
and the parallels respectively while the various
positions of the profile around the axis are called
meridians.
• The planar curve and the axis of rotation form the plane
of zero angle i.e. ν = 0.
Surface of revolution (continued)
• To derive the parametric equation of a

surface of revolution, a local coordinate
system with a Z axis coincident with the
axis of rotation is assumed as shown in Fig.
• The local system shown by the subscript L

can be created as follows.
• Choose the perpendicular direction from

the point u = 0 on the profile as the XL axis
and the intersection point between XL and
ZL as the origin of the local system.
• The YL axis is automatically determined by

the right hand rule.
• Now consider a point G(u) = P(u,0) on the profile that

rotates an angle about ZL when the profile rotates the same
angle.
• Considering the shaded triangle which is perpendicular to

the ZL axis, the parametric equation of the surface of
revolution can be written as
• If we choose zL(u) = u for each point on the profile, the above equation gives the local coodinates (xL, yL, zL) of
a point P(u,v) as [rZ(u) cos ν, rZ(u) sin ν , u].
• The database of a surface of revolution must include its profile, axis of rotation and the angle of rotation as
starting and ending angles.
• Whenever the user requests the display of the surface with a mesh size of m X n, the u range is divided
equally into (m-1) divisions and m values of u are obtained.
• Similarly, the ν range is divided equally into n values and the above equation is used to generate points on
the surface.
Tabulated cylinder
• A tabulated cylinder has been defined as a surface that
results from translating a space planar curve along a given
direction.
• It can be also defined as a surface that is generated by

moving a straight line (called generatrix) along a given
planar curve (called directrix).
• The straight line always stays parallel to a fixed given

vector that defines the v direction of the cylinder as shown
in Fig.
• The planar curve G(u) can be any wireframe entities.
• The position vector of any point P(u,v) on the surface can

be written as
Tabulated cylinder (continued)
• From a user point of view, G(u) is the desired curve the user
digitizes to form t he cylinder, v is the cylinder length and
is the cylinder axis. The representation of G(u) is already
available in the database at the time of creating it.
• The cylinder length v is input in the form of lower and higher

bounds where the difference between them gives the length.
• A zero value of the lower bound indicates the plane of the

directrix.
• The user inputs the cylinder axis as two points that are used
to determine , which is the unit vector along the axis.
• The database of a tabulated cylinder includes its directrix,

the unit vector , and the lower and upper bounds of the
cylinder.
Parametric representation of synthetic surfaces
• Synthetic surfaces provide the designers with better surface design tools than analytic surfaces.
• Consider the design of blade surfaces in jet aircraft engines.
• The design of these surfaces is usually based on aerodynamic and fluid flow simulations, often incorporating
thermal and mechanical stress deformation.
• These simulations yield ordered sets of discrete streamline points which must be then connected accurately
by surfaces.
• Any small deviation in these aerodynamic surfaces can significantly degrade performance.
• Another example is creation of blending surfaces typically encountered in designing dies for injection
moulding of plastic products.
Parametric representation of synthetic surfaces (continued)
Hermite Bicubic Surface
• The parametric bicubic surface patch connects four corner points and utilizes a bicubic equation.
• Therefore 16 vector conditions (or 48 scaler conditions) are required to find the coefficients of the equation.
• When these coefficients are the four corner data points, the eight tangent vectors at the corner points (two at
each point in the u and v directions) and the four twist vectors at the corner points, a Hermite bicubic surface
patch results.
• The bicubic equation can be written as
• The matrix form of the above equation is

Hermite Bicubic Surface (continued)
• In order to determine the coefficients Ci, consider

the patch shown in Fig.
• Applying the boundary conditions into the above

equation, solving for the coefficients and
rearranging give the following final equation of a
where [MH] is given by the equation

• The matrix B is partitioned to indicate the grouping of the similar boundary conditions.
• It can also be written as
where [P], [Pu], [Pv] and [Puv] are the submatrices of the corner points, corner u-tangent vectors, corner v-
tangent vectors and the corner twist vectors respectively.
• The tangent and twist vectors at any point on the surface are given by
where [MH]u or [MH]v is given by
• Similar to the cubic spline, the bicubic form permits C1 continuity from one patch to the next.
• The necessary two conditions are to have the same curves (C0 continuity) and the same direction of the
tangent vectors (C1 continuity) across the common edge between the two patches.
• The magnitudes of the tangent vectors does not have to be the same.
• Before writing the continuity conditions in terms of the [B] matrix, let us expand the above equations to see
what influences the position and tangent vectors.
• The above equation shows that the corner v-tangent and

twist vectors affect the position and tangent vectors
respectively all along the u=0 and u=1 except at v=0 and 1
where F3 and F4 are both zero.
• To write the blending conditions for C1 continuity between

two patches, consider the surface shown in Fig.
• These conditions to connect patch 1 and patch 2 along the

u edges are
where K is a constant.
• The above equation can be interpreted as blending an infinite number of cubic spline segments on each patch
(each corresponding to a particular v value) with C1 continuity across the u edge.
• Using the equations
the equations
can be expressed in terms of rows of the [B] matrix as shown in Fig.
• The Fig. shows the constrained elements of each matrix only. Empty elements of each matrix are
unconstrained and can have arbitrary values.
• One can find similar matrices to join the two patches at the v=1 and v=0 edges.
• The Ferguson surface (also called the F-surface patch) is considered a bicubic surface patch with zero twist
vectors at the patch corners, as shown in this special surface is useful in design and machining applications.
• Thus the boundary matrix for the F-surface patch

becomes
• The tangent vectors at the corner points can be approximated in

terms of the corner positions using the direction and length of the
chord lines joining the corner points.
• Hence the designer does not have to input tangent vector

information and the computations required to calculate the surface
parameters are simplified.
• This is useful if tool paths are to be generated to mill the surface.

• The characteristics of the bicubic surface patch are very similar to those of the cubic spline.
• The patch can be used to fit a bicubic surface to an array of data points homomorphic to a m X n rectangular
grid.
• The control of the resulting surface is global and is not intuitively based on the input data.
• In addition, the requirement of tangent and twist vectors as input data does not fit very well the design
environment because the intuitive feeling for such data is usually not clear.
Bezier surface
• The following equation can be written for any point on the Bezier surface patch.
where P(u,v) is any point on the surface and Pij

are the control points.
• These points form the vertices of the control or

characteristic polyhedron (shown dashed in the
Fig.) of the resulting Bezier surface.
• The points are arranged in an (n+1) X (m+1)

rectangular array as seen from the above
equation.
Bezier surface (continued)
• In comparison with equation of Bezier curve
expanding the equation of Bezier surface patch of

the previous slide gives
• The characteristics of a Bezier surface are same as that of a Bezier curve.
• The surface interpolates the four corner control points if we substitute the (u,v) values of (0,0), (1,0), (0,1)
and (1,1) into the previous equation.
• The surface is also tangent to the corner

segments of the control polyhedron.
• The tangent vectors at the corners are:

• In addition, the Bezier curve possesses convex hull property.
• The convex hull in this case is the polyhedron formed by connecting the furthest control points on the
control polyhedron.
• The convex hull includes the control polyhedron of

the surface as it includes the control polygon in
the case of the Bezier curve.
• The shape of the Bezier surface can be modified

by either changing some vertices of its polyhedron
or keeping the polyhedron fixed and specifying
multiple coincident points of some vertices.
• The normal to a Bezier surface at any point can be calculated by equation
• When expanding this equation, it should be noted that Pij X Pkl = 0 if i=k and j=1 and that Pij X Pkl = ― Pkl X Pij
• As with the Bezier curve, the degree of the Bezier surface is tied to the number of the control points.
• Surfaces requiring greater design flexibility need a larger control point array and would therefore have a high
polynomial degree.
• To achieve required design flexibility while keeping the surface degree manageable, large surfaces are
generally designed by piecing together small surface patches of lower degrees.
• This keeps the overall degree of the surface low but requires a special attention to ensure that appropriate
continuity is maintained across patch boundaries.
• A composite Bezier curve can have C0 (positional) and / or C1 (tangent) continuity.
• A positional continuity between, say, two patches requires that the common boundary curve between the two
patches must have a common boundary polygon between the two characteristic polyhedrons as shown in
Fig(a).
• For tangent continuity across the boundary, the segments attached to the common boundary polygon, of one
patch polyhedron must be collinear with the corresponding segments of the other patch polyhedron as shown
in Fig(b).
• This implies that the tangent planes of the patches at the common boundary curve are coincident.
• In design environment, the Bezier surface is superior to a bicubic surface in that it does not require tangent or
twist vectors to define the surface.
• However, its main disadvantage is the lack of local control.
• Changing one or more control points affects the shape of the whole surface.
• Therefore, the user cannot selectively change the shape of the part of the surface.
B-spline surface
• A rectangular set of data (control) points creates the

surface.
• This set forms the vertices of the characteristic

polyhedron that approximates and controls the shape of
the resulting surface.
• A B-spline surface can approximate or interpolate the

vertices of the polyhedron as shown in Fig.
• The degree of the surface is independent of the number

of control points and continuity is automatically
maintained throughout the surface by virtue of the form
of blending functions.
• As a result, surface intersections can be easily

managed.
B-spline surface (continued)
• A B-spline surface patch defined by an (n+1) x (m+1) array of control points is given by extending the
following equation of B-spline curve in two dimensions to yield
The following equations apply as well.
• The knot vectors in both u and v directions are constant but not necessarily equal.
• B-spline surfaces have the same characteristic as B-spline curves. Their major advantage over Bezier curve
is the local control.
• Composite B-spline surfaces can be generated with C0 and C1 continuity in the same way as composite
Bezier surfaces.
Blending surface
• A blending surface is a surface that connects two adjacent surfaces or

patches.
• The blending surface is usually created to manifest C0 and C1 continuity with

the two given patches.
• The fillet surface shown in the Fig. is considered a special case of a blending
surface.
• Fig. shows a general blending surface. A bicubic surface can be
used to blend patch 1 and patch 2 with both C0 and C1 continuity.
• The corner points P1, P2, P3 and P4 of the blending surface and
their related tangent and twist vectors are readily available from
the two patches.Therefore, the [B] matrix of the blending surface
can be evaluated.
• A bicubic blending surface is suitable to blend cubic patches, that

is bicubic Bezier or B-spline patches.
Blending surface (continued)
• For patches of other orders, a B-spline blending surface may be generated in

the following scenario.
• A set of points and their related v-tangent vectors beginning with P1 and
ending with P2 can be generated along the v=1 edge of patch 1.
• Similarly a corresponding set can be generated along the v=0 edge of patch 2.
• Cubic spline curves can now be created between the two sets.
• These curves can be used to generate an ordered rectangular set of points

that can be connected with the B-spline surface which becomes the blending
surface.
• Some CAD/CAM systems allow the users to connect a given set of curves with
a B-spline surface directly.
Blending surface (continued)
• In the case of the fillet surface shown in Fig., a fillet radius is used to generate the surface.
• Hence the rectangular set of points to create the B-spline surface can be generated by creating fillets
between corresponding v=constant curves on both patches.
• In turn, points can be generated on these fillets.

Sculptured surfaces
• Sculptured surfaces arise extensively in automotive die and mould making, aerospace, glass, cameras,
shoes and appliance and various other industries.
• A sculptured surface is defined as a collection or sum of interconnected and bounded parametric patches
together with blending and interpolation formulas.
• The surface must be susceptible to processing for CNC machine tools.
• The analytic and synthetic patches described thus far can be used to create a sculptured surface.
• From a modeling viewpoint, a sculptured surface can be divided into the proper patches which can be
created to produce a C0 or C1 continuous surface.
• The two patch surfaces discussed throughout this discussion are considered sculptured surfaces.

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CAD FOR MANUFACTURING

Dr. Sankha Deb

Lecture material available on Course Homepage

• Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) and Computer-

• The typical product cycle is shown in Figure in the next slide.

• Prototypes may be built for this purpose.

• Prototypes can be built in a laboratory or a computer to test the design.

• Computer prototypes are less expensive and faster to generate.

• As layer thickness decreases, accuracy increases.

• There are variety of layer-building processes used in rapid prototyping.

• This includes preparation of drawings, reports, and bill of materials.

• It also selects the machines that will perform the processes.

• Once process planning has been completed,

• Parts that pass the quality control inspection

• If a prototype is needed for design evaluation, it can be constructed by using software

• Some CAM applications for manufacturing planning are Computer-Aided Process

• Some important applications of CAM in this category are:

CAPP, Computer-assisted NC part programming, computerized machinability data

• Computer-Aided Process Planning (CAPP) systems are available today to prepare

Computer-assisted NC part programming

• For complex part geometries, computer-assisted part programming represents a much

Development of work standards

• There are several commercial packages for setting work standards.

Production and inventory planning

• The production schedule is a specific plan of the quantities to be produced of individual

• The Materials Requirement Planning (MRP) is a planning technique usually

Computer-aided line balancing

• These management and control areas include:

• The applications of computer process control in automated production systems include

• It includes a variety of approaches to ensure the highest quality levels in the

Shop floor control

• It refers to production management techniques for collecting data from factory

Just-in-time production systems

• It is especially applicable in mechanical design.

• Inerference checking examines the 2-D geometric models to identify interferences

• It is useful for analyzing mechanical assemblies.

• Software for Tolerance analysis is used for various functions like

• It is a numerical analysis technique for determining the approximate solutions to

• In FEA, the physical object is modeled by an assemblage of discrete interconnected

• CIM is often said to be more of a business philosophy than a computer system.

Advantages of Wireframe models

•The major advantage of wireframe modeling is its simplicity to construct.

•To overcome this confusion, lines can be hidden, dashed, or blanked.

• A geometric description of curves defining an object can be tackled in several ways.

• A curve can be described by arrays of coordinate data or by an analytic equation.

• Nonparametric equations can be explicit or implicit.

• This curve representation is known as nonparametric explicit form.

• Where P is the position vector of point P as shown in Fig. below.

• Other limitations of nonparametric representations of curves are:

• Parametric representation of curves overcomes all of the above difficulties.

• The parameter acts as a local coordinate for points on the curve.

•Geometric transformations can be performed directly on the parametric equations.

•The magnitude of the vector is given by

and the direction cosines of the vector are given by

• Parametric polynomials usually fit the control points.

• The graphics system performs all related graphics techniques.

• Consider the object shown in Fig.

• They are based on edges, vertices or blocks.

• The set of edges, vertices or blocks is the set of

• Furthermore the connectivity vertices for the first

• E.g. 1,A&B in Fig (b) indicates that vertex 1 is

• There may exist more than one database to implement a structure.