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BendCad Modeler
Head: Cheng-Hua Wang
Contact: David Bourne (db@ri.cmu.edu)
Mailing address:
Carnegie Mellon University
Robotics Institute
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Associated center: CIMDS
Associated lab/group: Rapid Manufacturing Lab
For more information, see this project's homepage.
Bend_Cad is an in-house sheet metal design system for the Intelligent Bending Workstation Project (IBW). Traditional design practice for sheet metal part is to design the final 3D shape (usually in wire-frame representation) first, an unfolding software is then used to obtain the 2D flat pattern. BendCad adopts the "parallel design" concept to design a bent sheet metal part in both 2D and 3D domains. Designers can choose the domain which is easier for them to construct the part. A small library of parametric primitive shapes is provided as features to construct the part. Part construction is similar to CSG (Construct Solid Geometry) constructing approach. It is done by either adding (bending operation) or subtracting (punching operation) primitives shapes in the current constructing model.
BendCad resolves the ambiguity of unfolding 3D wire-frame model into 2D flat pattern and provides more feature information for further process planning. By having both 2D and 3D representations at hand at the same time, the designers consider the shapes of both the stock and the finished part while adding features to the most appropriate representation.
Note: This list may not be comprehensive. It contains only those publications in the RI publications database. Entries are listed in reverse chronological order.