A reverse engineering based approach for product form design

Shih-Wen Hsiao and Jiun-Chau Chuang, Department of Industrial Design, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan 70101, R.O.C. A reverse engineering based approach for product form design is addressed in this article. In this method, the designer makes 3D product models based on his/her ideas with polyurethane or polystyrene foam rst. The data points on the surface of the product are then measured using a non-contact 3D scan device, and the point clouds for 30 crosssections of these products are obtained based on the measured information. New shapes are further generated with two different product models using four shape blending/morphing techniques. In this manner, the designer can generate creative product that ts users demand in a shorter time. k 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. c Keywords: industrial design, computer aided design, design method, product design, reverse engineering

1 Kruth, J P and Kerstens, A Reverse engineering modeling of free-form surfaces from point clouds subject to boundary conditions Journal of Materials Processing Technology Vol 76 (1998) 120127 2 Lee, K H and Woo, H Direct integration of reverse engineering and rapid prototyping Computers & Industrial Engineering Vol 38 (2000) 2138

dea development and mock-up making are key works for a designer to present his/her ideas during the process of product development. Traditionally, the designers usually used Polyurethane (PU) foam or Extruded Polystyrene (EK) foam, clay, gypsum, lumber, wax and so forth to make a mock-up after the ideas were developed. Lately, designers gradually make product-models with computer and related equipment automatically instead of manually, due to the rapid progress in computer hardware as well as software. After the CAD/CAM system was ushered into the product development process, the time schedule for product development and manufacture was reduced a lot. In todays highly competitive marketplace along with technology improvement, a good product should not only satisfy consumers physical requirements, but should also satisfy their psychological needs. If the PU or EK foam, clay or other models can be scanned with a contact or non-contact scanner to obtain their geometric information, a real 3D product model can be created. Thus, reverse engineering1,2 is a good method for new product-form development. We know that the acquisition of geometric information of the product is
www.elsevier.com/locate/destud 0142-694X/03 $ - see front matter Design Studies 24 (2003) 155171 doi:10.1016/S0142-694X(02)00030-3 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain

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3 Ishida, J The general Bspline interpolation method and its application to the modication of curves and surfaces Computer-Aided Design Vol 29 No 11 (1997) 779790 4 Lai, J Y, Ueng, W D and Yao, C Y Registration and data merging for multiple sets of scan data Advanced Manufacturing Technology Vol 15 (1999) 5463 5 Ueng, W D, Lai, J Y and Doong, J L Sweep-surface reconstruction from three-dimensional measured data Computer-Aided Design Vol 30 No 10 (1998) 791805 6 Kim, H K and Lee, S C A method for approximate NURBS curve compatibility based on multiple curve retting Computer-Aided Design Vol 32 (2000) 237252 7 Ma, W and He, P B-spline surface local updating with unorganized points Computer-Aided Design Vol 30 No 11 (1998) 853862 8 Lin, A C, Lin, S Y and Fang, T H Automated sequence arrangement of 3D point data for surface tting in reverse engineering Computers in Industry Vol 35 (1998) 149173 9 Yang, M and Lee, E Segmentation of measured point data using a parametric quadric surface approximation Computer-Aided Design Vol 31 (1999) 449457 10 Huang, M C and Tai, C C The pre-processing of data points for curve tting in reverse engineering The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology Vol 16 (2000) 635642 11 Chen, S C and Parent, R E Shape averaging and its applications to industrial design IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications Vol 9 No 1 (1989) 4754 12 Jones, J C Design Method, Second edition Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, USA (1992) 13 Roozenburg, N F M and Eekels, J Product Design: Fundamentals and Methods John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK (1995) 14 Hui, K C and Li, Y A feature-based shape blending technique for industrial design Computer-Aided Design Vol 30 No 10 (1998) 823834

the rst step and the most important work for reverse engineering. The accuracy of the acquired conguration data affects the surface quality of the product model directly. Therefore, how to measure and, further to take proper regulation to obtain good data points, is a very important problem to be solved39. In the application of industrial design, the material used usually affects the accuracy of the constructed model. Thus, it is very important to cut off the improper measured data and reduce the number of data points before a 3D product model is constructed, if the point clouds are obtained with laser scanner10. Parametric model and shape averaging are two techniques usually used in constructing 3D conguration with computer graphics11. If 2D congurations are considered as the cross sections of an object, then a 3D product model could be constructed with them. On the other hand, if the shapes of these 2D cross sections are changed, a new 3D product model can be created. Evoking design ideas is a very important task for a designer in the design process. Several methods usually used for this purpose such as the brainstorming, function analysis, morphological chart, synectics, and analysis of interconnected decision area (AIDA) etc. have been proposed12,13. In the mean time, a few researchers proposed theories for automatic generating product forms11,14,15. However, they were all focused on describing the surface blending method, and seldom considered a connection with reverse engineering. A parametric shape blending method11 was usually used for automatic product conguration generation. Hui and Li14 proposed a 2D curve blending method, which could be used to synthesize 3D conguration by combining outlines of 2D curves. This method is started by taking the features of curves that could be used for blending surfaces and then establishing the corresponding relationships among the features. It was applied to cases for shape design. Wang16 proposed another method for shape generation. In the related research, the conguration of a product was usually blended with a set of discrete points. Thus, the corresponding relationships between the points on different sections should be known before a product conguration is generated. In establishing the corresponding relationships between points, Chen and Parent11 proposed a method with the shortest distance between two points, while Sederberg and Greenwood15 proposed another physically based approach, to avoid the constructed curves crisscrossing each other during the shape blending procedure. As for the processing of the data information, a lot of researchers have paid much attention to the studies of how to deal with the data information

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such that the product conguration can be created in the shortest time. For example, Ma and He7 applied unorganized points to update a B-spline surface. Kruth and Kerstens1 proposed a method for constructing a freeform surface with point clouds subject to boundary conditions.

In surface blending method, Yau17 proposed an approach for constructing the engine intake ports by using surface lofting algorithm. In this method, the measured cross-section data were rst blended to form rational Bsplines, which were then used to blend the required surface. Ueng et al.5 constructed sweep-surface with the measured three-dimensional data. Lai and Ueng18 proposed a revolution surface constructing method, which can be used to construct a revolution surface with the measured points. Though Lee and Woo2 integrated reverse engineering and a rapid prototyping technique to create a product model, no attention has been paid to how to blend new shapes with the original shapes.

In this study, we would like to integrate the reverse engineering and shape blending techniques to construct a shape-generating model. With the aid of this system, a designer can generate new creative 3D product models by using two handmade original models. It will be more convenient for product design if this shape design model is integrated with the existing commercial CAD systems. In this manner, designers can generate many different product forms from two original PU forms or clay models.

1
Sederberg, T W and Greenwood, E A physically based approach to 2-D shape blending ACM Computer Graphics Vol 26 No 2 (1992) 2534 16 Wang, H S An approach to computer-aided styling Design Studies Vol 16 No 1 (1995) 50 61 17 Yau, H T Reverse engineering of engine intake ports by digitization and surface approximation International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture Vol 37 No 6 (1997) 855871 18 Lai, J Y and Ueng, W D Reconstruction of surfaces of revolution from measured points Computers in Industry Vol 41 No 2 (2000) 147161

Outline of the design model

The design model used in this study includes the following steps:
15

(1) Select two objective product samples. (2) Acquire the geometric information of the given products with a noncontact scanner. (3) Pre-processing for setting the point clouds. (4) Take cutting planes for the point clouds. (5) Establish sequential order of the cross sections on an object. (6) Establish the corresponding relationship between cross sections on two different objects. (7) Generate new morphed point cloud. (8) Construct product surface with the new morphed point cloud. (9) Certify surface accuracy. (10)Construct 3D model. (11)Generate 3D solid model with rapid prototyping machine.

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Figure 1 Acquisition of the data with a no contact scanner.

2 Implementation procedures 2.1 Acquisition of data points

The rst step is to make a 3D product model and scan it with a non-contact laser scanner (Shape Grabber Co.) shown in Fig. 1 to get the measured data of a complete model (Fig. 2).

Figure 2 The

measured

data of a complete model.

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2.2

Preparation of point clouds

The orientation of the scanned data might not coincide with the coordinate system. For the sake of convenience to construct the product model, the orientation of the scanned point clouds should be regulated to coincide with the coordinate system. The regulating procedure is specied as follows. (1) Construct three fundamental planes at origin. (2) Select a at part of the point cloud as a reference plane. (3) Stick the point cloud on one of the fundamental planes constructed in step 1 with the reference plane selected in step 2. (4) Take proper translations and/or rotations with the operation interface in Fig. 3 to orient the point clouds to a right direction (Fig. 4).

2.3

Take proper cross sections for the model

To simplify and unify the set of variables, all the product models are set to cut along Z-axis to take the cross sections. In this paper, each model was cut by 30 sections with equal space. Fig. 5 shows an example of cutting a model to take the cross sections. How to cut the model can be set by the operating interface shown in Fig. 5 (a) that is designed in this study.

2.4

Retrieve data points

Sometimes the scanned data will miss for several reasons, such as having a concavity or a partition line on the model. In this case, the data should be retrieved. In this study, the interpolation method was used for data retrieving. Fig. 6 shows the difference between the retrieved and not retrieved models.

2.5

Reduce the data points

When the density of scanned data is too high, the number of data points can be reduced. In this study, the point cloud reduction method proposed by Lee and Woo2 was used to reduce the redundant points. Fig. 7 shows the errors of the constructed curves in terms of the data reduction ratios. The designer can take a proper reduction ratio based on the assigned error. The data distribution after retrieving is shown in Fig. 8.

Figure 3 Operation

inter-

face for translations and rotations.

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Figure 4 The regulated point cloud at right orientation (a) top view (b) front view (c) side view.

Figure 5 Cutting planes for the model of the cross sections (a) side view (b) another view.

Figure 6 The

difference

between the retrieved and no retrieved models.

Figure 7 The

relationship

between the data reduction ratios and the errors of constructed curves.

2.6

Establish the corresponding relationship between the points on two different sections

The number of points may be different on two different sections. However, not only the number of points on each section should be the same, but the points should also be corresponded one to one on two different sections if a new shape is to be created by using shape-blending method. To establish

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Figure 8 Data distribution after data reduction.

the corresponding relationship between points on different sections, a ray ring method is introduced as follows. The ray ring procedure can be performed with the following steps: (1) Set all the sections parallel to XY plane with their bottom on XZ plane. (2) Take the origin (0,0) z-axis as the central axis. (3) Calculate the angle s between horizontal line and the radial lines connecting the center point and the points on the curves. (4) Take the curve with fewer points as the datum curve for comparison. Here we take an example to specify the ray-ring method. Assuming that there are nine and seven points on two section curves a and b shown in Fig. 9, respectively. Now the corresponding relationships between the points a1~a9 and b1~b7 are required. The procedure is specied step by step as follows: (1) Put two curves on the horizontal plane, say XZ plane, with their centers coincide with the origin (0,0) (see Fig. 10 (a)). (2) Calculate the angles bi and aj formed with the horizontal line and the radial lines connecting the origin (0,0) and points b1~b7 and points a1~a9, respectively. (3) Decide the corresponding relationship between point bi and point aj

Figure 9 Two sections on two different models to be blended.

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Figure 10 Establish the corresponding relationship

between two curves with the ray-ring method.

by comparing the magnitude of bi and aj. Point bi and point aj are taken as a pair if the difference between the angles bi and aj is the minimum in comparison with the differences betweenbi and all other angles except aj. (4) The corresponding relationships among the points on different sections will be obtained after the process has completed. The result is shown in Fig. 10 (b).

2.7

Generate new point clouds

A new product shape can be obtained by blending with two different shapes. In this study, four blending methods are adopted. The formulae of these methods are listed as follows: (1) Weighted arithmetic mean method: C = w1g1 + w2g2 (2) Weighted geometric mean method: C = g1w1g2w2 (3) Weighted harmonic mean method: 1 w1 w2 + g1 g2 (4) Generalized weighted mean method: C= C = [(w1g1) + (w2g2)]1/ (1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

Where g1 and g2 are the geometric data and w1 and w2 are the weightings of shape 1 and shape 2, respectively, C is the geometric data of the new shape, and is a blending parameter which is decided by the designer for any real number in the range (5)

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Figure 11 The constructed section curves.

Figure 12 The constructed surface.

2.8
19 Hsiao, S W Computer aided shape design of an underwater hull Naval Engineers Journal Vol 108 No 1 (1996) 3747 20 Hsiao, S W and Chen, C H A semantic and shape grammar based approach for product design Design Studies Vol 18 (1997) 275296 21 Hsiao, S W and Wang, H P Applying the semantic transformation method to product form design Design Studies Vol 19 (1998) 309330

Surface construction

Based on the data distribution in Fig. 8, we can construct section curves with B-spline1921 as shown in Fig. 11. These cross sections are further used to construct a loft surface with the following formula. m n (6)

S (u, v) =

Ni, p(u)Nj, q(v)Pi, j i = 0j = 0

Where u and v are two parameters dening a surface, Ni, p (u) and Nj, q (v) are normalized B-spline basis functions, and Pi, j are position vectors of the polygon vertices. The constructed surface is shown in Fig. 12.

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2.9

Construction of 3D model

The above-obtained surface can then be transformed into IGES format and input to a CAD system to construct a 3D model. For example, Fig. 13 shows a 3D surface model (Fig. 13 (a)) and a shell model (Fig. 13 (b)) constructed with I-DEAS.

2.10

Rapid prototyping

The obtained 3D CAD model in Fig. 13 can then be transferred into STL format and input to the rapid prototyping (RP) machine to produce a real 3D model as shown in Fig. 14.

Figure 13 The constructed 3D models (a) a 3D model; (b) a shell model.

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Figure 14 A 3D real model made by RP.

3 Results and discussion 3.1 Application for product design

After the 3D models are constructed, they can be used to generate new shapes to help the designer to develop design ideas. Here we take an example to specify how to apply it to product design. Fig. 15 shows two models of a mouse and a small seal. Taking their point clouds for cross sections with a laser scanner, based on the previously specied techniques, we have the point clouds of both samples as shown in Fig. 16. Take these samples to blend out a new shape. For ease of use by the user, a friendly operating interface was designed by the authors as shown in Fig. 17. Fig. 17 (a) is used to regulate the required blending ratio of the two samples. This gure shows the example of using the arithmatic

Figure 15 A mouse and a seal-shaped model.

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Figure 16 Point clouds for cross sections.

Figure 17 The

operating

interface for blending a new shape with two original models.

mean as the blending method. The other three methods can also be used in the same manner if they are selected as the blending method (Fig. 17 (b) and (c)). The line width, line color, point size, and point color to be displayed can also be regulated in the operating interface shown in Fig. 17 (d). For example, Fig. 18 shows a new shape (the middle one) obtained with the mouse/seal ratio equals to 60:40. Then a 3D model of the new shape can be obtained as shown in Fig. 19 (a). This model was further input to rapid prototyping machine (Z402, Z Corp.) to make a real solid model (Fig. 19 b) that can be used to discuss with the consumer.

3.2

The effect of different blending methods

To compare the differences among the results obtained with the four different blending methods described in section 3.7, we take the example of using a whale-shaped toy and a lm stand as two original models (Fig. 20) to generate new shapes. Fig. 21 shows the results obtained with the four different blending methods by using the whale and lm-stand ratio

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Figure 18 The

blended

result with the mouse/seal ratio equal to 60:40.

Figure 19 The constructed 3D CAD model and RP model (a) 3D CAD model; (b) RP model.

Figure 20 A

lm-stand

model and a whale-shaped model.

equal to 120:-20. In a comparison of these results, it is concluded that the results obtained with the geometric mean are little different from those obtained with the arithmetic mean method, while the results obtained with the harmonic mean method are evidently different from those obtained with the previous two methods. Besides, it shows that the conguration of a 3D model obtained with the weighted harmonic mean method is more

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Figure 21 The new shapes obtained with four different blending methods.

unexpected than those obtained with the arithmetic mean and geometric mean methods. Thus, creative design ideas without exception will be obtained if the harmonic method is used. However, the discrepancy of the model constructed with this method is larger than those obtained with the previous two methods. On the other hand, the results obtained with the generalized weighted mean method have the effect of local scaling, so creative design ideas can also be obtained by using this method.

3.3

The effect of different blending ratio

To show the effect of adopting different blending ratios, we also use the whale and lm-stand shown in Fig. 20 as the two original models to generate new shapes with different blending ratios. Fig. 22 shows the results obtained with weighted arithmetic mean method (Eq. (1)) by using the ratios of the whale to the lm-stand equal to 40:140; 30:70; 50:50; 70:30; and 140:-40. In these ratios, the weights of whale are increased monot-

Figure 22 The obtained with

shapes different

whale to lm-stand ratios (a) 40:140; (b) 30:70; (c) 70: 30; (e)

50:50; (d) 140: 40.

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onously, while those of lm-stand are decreased monotonously. The results show that the new shapes are evidently different and strongly affected by the blending ratio. It is seen that the model with the larger weighting dominates the generated new shape.

3.4

The difference between interpolation blending and extrapolation blending

The weightings w1 and w2 in Eq. (1) could be any real number, which means that w1 and w2 can be larger than unity or less than zero. If the two weightings are all positive and less than unity and satisfy with w1+w2=1, then it is said that the new shape is generated with interpolation blending, otherwise it is said to be blended with extrapolation. Based on this denition, we see that Fig. 22 (b)(d) are blended with interpolation, while Fig. 22 (a) and (e) are blended with extrapolation. The results show that the new shape is easy to be guessed or well controlled if the interpolation rule is used, while some strange shapes or shapes beyond expectation will be obtained if the extrapolation rule is used. It means that the extrapolation rule will get creative design ideas, which is very helpful for conceptual design. The CAD models shown in Fig. 22 can be further input to the rapid prototyping machine to make real 3D product models as shown in Fig. 23.

Figure 23 The RP models for the results shown in Fig. 22.

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Conclusions

A reverse engineering based approach for product design is proposed in this article. In this method, a designer can make 3D product models with PU or EK foam articially. Then a non-contact laser scanner is used to measure and record the geometric data of the congurations. The measured data are then smoothed with skills to get smooth models. A ray ring method was used to generate the corresponding relationships between two points on two different sections. Two different models are further used to generate new shapes with four different shape-blending methods. In this manner, designers can develop their ideas in a shorter time. Though an example is used to specify the implementation procedures, this method can also be used to do form design for all other products.

Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the National Science Council of the Republic of China for supporting this research under grant NSC90-2218-E-006-023.

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