Inferring solid objects with cylindrical surfaces from orthographic views

Two dimensional (2D) orthographic views are powerful representations of three dimensional (3D) objects, and the construction of 3D solid objects from orthographic views is one of various useful methods to generate geometric models. We have reported an estimation method for generation of solid objects with curved surfaces from inconsistent views for some simple cases (T. Watanabe and Y. Chao, 1998). We extend our method to deal with more complicated cases, where two or three cylinders with same radius intersect each other at right angles and cylinders contains some cut section. The intrinsic characteristics in three views of these solid objects are drawn out and utilized in the estimating process. Moreover, a verifying method is proposed to examine whether a generated solid object is suitable.