Generating the medial surface for a general boundary representation model raises several difficulties. Problems might emerge from the complexity of the resulting equations, singularities caused by unforeseen relative boundary element positions and orientations, etc. The majority of the current algorithms are based on the topology of the boundary representation model and produce wireframes composed of straight lines regardless of the real medial surfaces. Many of the solids used in engineering can be represented by extrusions, delimited by a cross-section and an extrusion distance. This paper develops a fast and efficient method for creating the facetted approximations of the medial surfaces of extrusions generated by sweeping along the normal direction to the generating cross-section.
Keywords Disassembly evaluation - Extrusions - Interference analysis - Layout modelling - Medial axis transform - Medial surface