Parallel interactive virtual machining on shared memory multiprocessors

Abstract

Interactive sculpting is the process by which a designer can impose free-form shape changes on the object being designed. It has potential applications in the fields like computer aided geometric design arid rapid prototyping. Our approach to interactive sculpting is through the intermediate step of interactive virtual nlachining (IVM). IVM is a subset of interactive sculpting in that the degrees offreedom available to the sculptor are reduced. The goal of our work is to demonstrate the feasibility of interactive virtual machining on a shared memo? multiprocessor workstation. Our prototype IVM system uses a voxel based approach. I t provides common machining tools to the user and uses Minkowski operations to implement those tools.Parallel implementation of the virtual machining tools has shown that sculpting with 2S63 voxel array is possible with frame rate of around 20 frameshec. We present the parallel algorithms for virtual machining tools and the results of implementation on a shared memory multiprocessor environment.