Representation of Mechanical Structure Morphology

A representation method of mechanical structure morphology is presented to simplify the retrieval process for 3D model and improve the design efficiency for mechanical structure in view of the difficulty of reusing 3D CAD model of mechanical structure. Its theoretical basis is developed by an improved sweep method of basic geometric solid. Its extraction rules based on analytic geometry expression are proposed, and its extraction method is developed. Then its characteristic is analyzed by comparing the mechanical structure morphology with the skeleton of 3D model. Finally, the research application of mechanical structure morphology is discussed according to the analysis on current situation of reuse of 3D model and the design requirement for many non-mechanical major professionals. The feasibility of representation method of mechanical structure morphology is demonstrated by an illustrative example. The example shows that mechanical structure morphology is successfully applied to detailed design of mechanical structure. The representation method of mechanical structure morphology provides a new research direction in feature simplification for mechanical structure, and theoretical foundation to study mechanical principle morphology.