Research On Collaborative Virtual Product Shape Design And Rapid Manufacturing System

With the rapid development of economy and the improvement of people's living standard, customers are not only satisfied with product's good quality and various of functions but also the short developing period and special characters. Virtual design technology is used to meet this need by using digital models to develop products.In this paper, a collaborative virtual product design platform is introduced. Virtual reality technology is used to build the human computer interface, haptic feedback input device is used for producing a series of sculpting operations to change the shape of the model, collaborative design environment is realized by programming WinSocket programs, rapid manufacturing is implemented by connecting with numerically controlled milling machine.The method of collaborative virtual design on personal computer is put forward in this paper. Based on the former experiences, OpenGL and Visual C++ are selected to be the developing tools for this platform, at the same time, the basic frame is outlined and problems are analyzed.In order to reduce the time of one updating period to 20 millisecond, ray-tracing algorithm and other speeding methods are used to convert three dimensional calculation into one dimensional operation. OpenGL functions are performed to draw triangles, paste pictures on models, and simulate the real light rays to get realistic stereo graphic interface in virtual environment. Windows Socket middle ware-NDK 2.0 is used to build the network structure.A three dimensional haptic input device is built to let the designer interact with computer. It has a photoelectrical coding device on each mechanical joint arm to detect the rotating angle, then the device's coordination can be calculated with the value of the angle. The function of haptic feedback is realized by using micro DC motor and corresponding algorithms.At the end of the paper, some experiments are taken to demonstrate that the design system has already reached the aim of short riming time, realistic virtual environment and easily used interface. What' more, rapid manufacturing is implemented by connecting with numerically controlled milling machine.