Extraction and Organization of Form Features into a Structured Boundary Model

Abstract

A method is presented for the automatic identification and extraction of feature information from the solid model of an object. The procedure consists of recognizing shape features, extracting those features as solid volumes and arranging them in a hierarchical structure. In this hierarchical model the main shape of the object is represented at the highest levels of abstraction, while form features are described at lower levels of specification. The system is divided into three modules: feature recognition, feature extraction and feature organization. The recognition step works on a face-based representation of solid objects, called Face Adjacency Hypergraph [1] and it takes advantage of the Kyprianou's method [12]. In the extraction phase every recognized form feature is completed with dummy entities to form a feasible object and in the organization step the completed features are arranged in a hierarchical graph, called Structured Face Adjacency Hypergraph, which is a modification of a model defined in a previous work [1].