Feature-based 3D morphing based on geometrically constrained sphere mapping optimization.

Current trends in free form editing suggest the development of a new novel editing paradigm for CAD models beyond traditional CAD editing of mechanical parts. To this end we wish to develop accurate, robust and efficient 3D mesh deformation techniques such as 3D structural morphing. In this paper, we present a feature-based approach to 3D morphing of arbitrary genus-0 polyhedral objects that is appropriate for CAD editing. The technique is based on a sphere mapping process built on an optimization technique that uses a target function to maintain the correspondence among the initial polygons and the mapped ones while preserving topology and connectivity through a system of geometric constraints. Finally, we introduce a fully automated feature-based technique that matches surface areas (feature regions) with similar morphological characteristics between the two morphed objects and performs morphing according to this feature correspondence list. Alignment is obtained without user intervention and is based on pattern matching between the feature graphs of the two morphed objects.