Meshes optimization in freeform and 3D printing for product design

Meshes optimization plays an important role in freeform surface reconstruction and 3D printing for product design. The purpose of this study applied the “Winner-take-all” method of Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) to classify the meshes in product model. SOM is to find the optimized feature points for the data points in model and reduce the points efficiently in the whole surface reconstruction process. An implicit surface based on radial basis function (RBF) kernel calculation reconstructed the meshes. Three case studies has been implemented to achieve an effective points data reduction and an error deviation acceptable process.