Reconstructing Polyhedral Swept Volumes from a Single-View Sketch

Solids-based Computer-Aided Design (CAD) systems are essential tools for detailed designs of mechanical components and assemblies. At the conceptual design stage, however, designers still prefer freehand sketches on paper. Sketch-based computer interfaces can be an alternative tool bridging the gap, and many attempts have been made to reconstruct 3D models from 2D sketches or drawings. Among the reconstruction methods, inflating cubic corners is one of attractive tools due to its simple and analytic nature. However, it can only handle limited regular polyhedrons whose planes are all mutually perpendicular. An extended cubic corner algorithm is developed so that linear swept volumes of arbitrary polygonal profiles can be reconstructed. The recognized swept volumes can be easily converted to feature-based parametric CAD models for further detailed designs.