On-Line Reconstruction of CAD Geometry

In reverse engineering and computer-aided design (CAD) applications point cloud data is usually manually scanned, reconstructed, and post-processed in separated steps. When point cloud data resulting from a scanning process do not satisfy certain necessary reconstruction requirements, one must perform scanning again to enable proper reconstruction. On-line reconstruction of 3d geometry allows one to generate and update a CAD reconstruction on-line during the scanning process with an hand-held laser scanner. Thus, regions where the scanned data is insufficient for the reconstruction are detected on the fly to allow an immediate correction and improvement of the scanned data. This enables the operator to focus on critical regions in the scanned data to improve the reconstruction quality. We present an on-line segmentation and on-line reconstruction of basic geometric primitives. The presented methods allow for a real-time processing of a point stream. They utilize data structures that can be updated at any time when additional data from the stream has to be processed. This data is used to complete and improve the segmentation and reconstruction during the scanning process.