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The geometric description used to represent solid objects significantly
affects the accuracy and quality of the final parts produced with Rapid Prototyping
(RP) technology. The current most common description is a rather straightforward
and crude geometric tessellated representation format, known as the ³STL file´.
But with the rapid growth of the RP industry, particularly RP toward rapid
manufacturing and rapid tooling, there has been a growing dissatisfaction with
this format among the RP community.

Direct slicing generates precise contours for each layer from the solid model
and avoids an intermediate representation. Adaptive slicing modifies the layer
thickness to take into account the curvature of the surface of the solid model in the
vertical direction, to alleviate the staircase effect, and to decrease the number of
layers. The process for adaptive direct slicing of the solid model from an
AutoCAD file is also presented.

Rapid Prototyping, also called Solid Freeform Fabrication (SFF), or Layered

Manufacturing (LM), automatically generates physical objects layer-by-layer
directly from 3-D CAD data, without conventional manufacturing and tooling
processes. Figure 1 shows some possible transferring ways from the CAD
model to the RP systems.

Geometric information processing for RP consists of two major steps:

slicing the geometric description of the part into layers to generate the contours of
the part for each layer, and then generating scan paths in each layer in a manner
dependent upon the particular RP process. This paper discusses a novel approach
to the former step (grayed boxes in figure 1).

In current RP practice, a 3-D CAD model is usually triangulated into an

intermediate form, the STL file, which is then sliced in a uniform layer thickness.
Each slice becomes the input to algorithms for generation of the paths for material
deposition /solidification. This process contributes to two important accuracy
issues: Ã

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Direct slicing of the solid model keeps the geometric and topological
robustness that the original data have. Its advantages include greater model
accuracy, preprocessing time reduction, checking and repairing routines
elimination, and file size reduction.

As mentioned above, the 3-D CAD model has to be sliced into a stack of
2½D layers for laser/forming head path planning. Direct slicing requires more
sophisticated algorithms to produce slices. The slicing function can be inside or
outside the CAD modeler system. Most commercial CAD modelers provide the
general intersection cross-section functions. It is usually in interactive or macro
command mode (see for example the sample program shown in appendix 1). For
RP-specific slicing, close cooperation between CAD, RP vendors, and users is
needed.

It may be advantageous to implement an RP-specific customization of an

existing modeler. The developed RP-driven file format and translator should use
existing solid modelers in the manner of third party software developers to
customize the modeler, rather than the more limited interactive user mode. The
necessary libraries and protocols for such development are readily available from
the solid modeling vendors. Extraction of cross-sectional contours is included in
such libraries, either as an explicit slicing operation or as a result of the boolean
intersection between the object geometry and a plane or a large cube of which one
face is the section plane.

This customization process requires the following steps:

a) Obtain the technical specifications for interfacing to the solid modeler at the
programmatic level, rather than simply as an interactive user;
b) Formulate the desired computation and interaction in terms of the modeler¶s
data structure;
c) Output the results of the computation.
The full data of the original solid modeler is therefore available and the lost that
occurs during tessellation is avoided.
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The staircase effect is unavoidable in layered manufacturing processes.
Decreasing the layer thickness can mitigate it. The simplest slicing procedure uses
a constant layer thickness in the whole model (see figure 3). It leads to long
manufacturing time and high cost, mainly because it does not consider the 6
geometric information of the model. In fact, some processes cannot handle variable
thickness in the manufacturing process. Most RP processes have permissible layer
thickness extents:
tpmin £ tp £ tpmax
where tp|is the permissible layer thickness depending on the process, tpmin|is the
minimum manufacturing layer thickness, tpma |is the maximum manufacturing
layer thickness. Some common values are:

SLA 0.0025 inch £ tp £ 0.030 inch,

FDM 0.005 inch £ tp £ 0.30 inch,
LOM 0.002 inch £ tp £ 0.015 inch,
SLS 0.003 inch £ tp £ 0.020 inch,
Sanders 0.0005 inch £ tp £ 0.005 inch.

tpmin|is one of the limits of the RP process. It decides the minimum feature
dimension that can be distinguished in the vertical direction.
The slicing strategy in consists of two stages:
detecting the features of the model, dividing the model into corresponding blocks;
optimizing the layer
thickness in each block based on the allowable staircase tolerance.

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Figure 7. . Different types of slicing: (a) constant, (b) adaptive and (c) local adaptive.

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2. Detection of the plane elements (facets and edges) orthogonal to the slicing
direction
3. Grouping of these elements in zones by propagation with a planar tolerance
4. For each identified zone (composed by one or more elements)
5. Computation of the type of the zone regarding its neighbourhood
6. If it is a critical zone (local minimum or saddle)
7. Mark the elements of the zone (facets, edges and vertices) as critical
8. Set a cutting plane at this height
9. For each vertice of the STL
10. Computation of its type regarding its neighbourhood
11. If it is a critical vertice (local minimum or saddle)
12. Mark the vertice as critical
13. Set a cutting plane at this height
14. Filtering of the planes
15. If the difference in height between cutting plane is below a threshold
16. Keep the plane with the maximum cutting contours area
17. Compute the slicing of the model by taking into account the critical points and
adapting the slicing step to the parts of the model isolated by the critical slicing
(e.g., the cylinder and the half sphere Figure 7c)
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