Computer Aided Design

The Department of Computer Science has a very strong program in computer graphics and computer aided design. The Alpha_1 group has been involved for a number of years in computer aided geometric design and manufacturing. Our URK project has been a technical case study in the use of Alpha_1 for computer aided prototyping of electromechanical systems.

Another activity of the robotics and sensing group at the department has involved an NSF CISE project on Computer Aided Prototyping, under the auspices of this NSF award we have worked in reverse engineering and inspection of mechanical parts from sense data, and constructing a CAD model before re-manufacturing. The CISE reverse engineering and inspection project has been a successful project which started in September 1992, and significant results ensued. A number of papers and videos describing this project are available for the public and can be accessed from this document. That project led to the SAM (Sensing for Advanced Manufacturing) project and the Feature-Based Reverse Engineering paradigm which is a huge undertaking that has been ongoing since August 1993, with four faculty and 4 - 6 students working on it, under the direction of Professors Bill Thompson , and Thomas Henderson .

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