Texture generating apparatus for dynamic interference checking

Abstract

The present invention provides an apparatus, system, and method for performing interference checking of the design in a project, component or part thereof to a designer, engineer, team of designers, or a team of engineers. In one embodiment, the present invention is comprised of a texture generating apparatus adapted to provide proximity analysis of objects in a design by dynamically generating a texture visually indicative of the spatial relationship between the modeled objects. In this embodiment, the texture generating apparatus is further comprised of a processing element. The processing element is adapted to perform the calculations of the interference check. The texture generating apparatus is further comprising a texture generating element. The texture generating element is adapted to provide the texture on which the interference check is based. The texture generating apparatus is further comprised a rendering element. The rendering element is adapted to provide the rendering of the texture onto the object in a design.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001] The present invention relates to computer aided design. More specifically the present invention enables a designer or team of designers to perform dynamic interference checking of objects, or envelopes or bounding boxes which represent the object(s), in a design, while at their respective workstations. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] With the continuing development of computer technology regarding computer graphics, there has been a steady increase in the dependency of designers, engineers, and manufacturers to implement and use CAD (computer aided design) and / or CAM (computer aided manufacturing) systems for assistance in the designing of new projects and in the redesigning of existing projects or processes that have been determined to contain flaws. Many facets of the design process that were once done by hand are now readily accomplished with the aid of computer and graphic systems. In addition, with the increase in computing power and the improve...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

Enables real-time interference checking and dynamic visualization of spatial relationships, reducing project completion time and costs by allowing continuous design work without CPU occupation and increasing the frequency of interference checks.

Problems solved by technology

If the interference checking produced a unsatisfactory result, the designed component would be returned to the original designer or team for reworking.

This is a most inefficient way to provide interference checking which could increase the time required for project completion and the total cost of the project.

Although this approach divides the overall project into smaller amounts, this approach still requires the component, part thereof, or sub-assembly to be forwarded to the project library / tree where there it is subjected to the process of interference checking.

While the overall size of each of the interference check processes has been reduced which accelerates the checking process, this approach increases the frequency of interference checking which is still quite disruptive to the design flow of the project.

Additionally, interference checking, while being performed more frequently and on smaller portions of the project, is still typically based upon the geometry defining a component, and as such still requires complex mathematical computations to complete the interference check.

As a consequence, it still has a disruptive effect on the design work flow and could, as such, become a chore and less likely to be performed as often as preferred.

A further drawback to the prior existing methods of performing the interference checking, is that to perform the required mathematical calculations related to the interference checks, whether being implemented in a desktop workstation or in a large mainframe, the CPU is typically utilized to complete the geometric calculations, which, depending on the size of the project, may take considerable processing power and time to finish.

While this approach somewhat alleviates the work flow disturbance of not having to forward the portion to a project library / tree where a team of engineers is assigned to perform interference checking, this method does require the designer, or team thereof, to cease the designing process and begin the tedious task of manually entering the related multitudinous polyhedra information into their workstation, which then performs the necessary calculations.

By requiring the designer to pause and enter the information manually, no real time saving or labor saving advantage is achieved using this approach.

In fact, because of the labor required by the designer to manually enter the required information, and then to have to wait for the workstation to perform the necessary calculations, this approach may actually inhibit the design process, and might reduce the number of interference checks that the designer, or team thereof, would and should perform.

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