Research On The VRML-based Slicing Technology

Rapid Prototyping is a new technology developed since the eights of twentieth century.It uses a new way instead of the traditional removed way and is the integration application of many subjects such as mechanical engineering,CAD technology,numerical control and so on.Using this technology,any complex mould can be produced.So RP technology is widely used in many fields such as industrial manafactural,architecture modeling,medical apparatus. Because of different CAD system using different files to describe the shape of model,a standard interface for the system is very necessary.So far,STL as the standard interface file is widely used in RP system,but some flaws exists such as data redundancy.Recently with the development of the Virtual Reality technology and network technology,VRML appears as a three-dimensional graphics file used in network . So it is easy to transform in Internet.During the processing of numerical-control machining based on network,Consumers maybe view the graphics which is transformed from the superior technology department.So in this paper,VRML is adopted as a data interface between CAD model and RP equipment and will be sliced. The system of slicing processing based on VRML is developed with VC++ and OpenGL,through which we can precisely view the line model and entity model about the three-dimension graphics of VRML.What's more,this system realizes the operation function which can make the model scaling zoom,tranlation and rotation,Then slice the VRML files. Two parts are included in this system: input the VRML and slice the file.First,the file structure will be analysed and the geometry data will be read and saved,then the three-dimension scene is drawn with OpenGL.At last,the file is sliced and the layer data is saved.