Volume-Based Cut-and-Paste Editing for Early Design Phases

Since product concepts are frequently changed in the early stage of design, the creation of its rough models is useful for communication among the design team. In this paper, we propose modeling operations based on a volume-based cut-and-paste method for generating rough 3D models using existing 3D models. Cut-and-paste editing extracts a characteristic feature from a source model and copies it to a target model. Our method allows pasting a wide variety of features that may have overhangs and handles, while most existing methods cannot manage such shapes. To realize such a volume-based cut-and-paste technique, this paper introduces a new method that consists of mesh segmentation and surface/volume fitting. In our method, a feature region and its surrounding area are separated from the user-specified area, and they are used for generating a parametric volume that involves the feature region. In feature pasting, parametric volumes are deformed and pasted to the target model and then features inside the volume are adaptively deformed and pasted to the target. On the basis of this cut-and-paste method, we propose modeling operations that enable feature registration, feature removal, feature pasting, and texture pasting. These operations were implemented and demonstrated using example models. The result shows our operations can effectively generate new models by removing and reusing partial shapes in existing models.