SHEFFIELD, UK, Oct 27, 2015, Polygonica, the Polygon Processing Software from MachineWorks will be exhibiting at formnext in Frankfurt from 17th-20th November 2015 in Hall 3.1 Stand number D72.

FEATURE RECOGNITION

On display there will be some of the latest features of the upcoming Polygonica release v1.3 such as tools for feature recognition allowing the user to extract geometric shape data from a surface mesh automatically.  Useful applications of this feature are, for example, the creation of toolpaths for machining a part defined as a series of features such as pockets, slots, drilled holes and bosses. Recognisable shapes include a long list of simple surfaces such as spheres, cones and tori but also the complex surfaces of a mesh solid.

POINT CLOUD

Polygonica version 1.3 contains support for handling point clouds. Usually a point cloud will have come from scanning of a 3D object, and typically the point cloud will need to be converted into a 3D mesh solid. The point set structure is closely linked to the way that scan data is provided; typically a 3D solid is scanned from a number of different angles and the point coordinates are provided in ’scanner space’ along with a transform to convert the points to world space.

GEODESIC PATHS

Another new feature from Polygonica v1.3 are geodesic paths, the ability to calculate the shortest path between a pair of points on the surface of a solid. Polygonica can calculate both the true geodesic path (shortest possible distance) and the path calculated following only the edges of the mesh.

OFFSETTING OPEN SOLIDS

The solid offsetting functionality has been extended to allow open solids to be offset.  Polygonica has added functionality to allow a solid with an open surface to be thickened. This is achieved by offsetting the surface and adding faces to join the boundary of the original surface to the boundary of the offset surface. This is extremely useful for offsetting solids that are not well-defined like an artistic piece or prototyping parts. This function can save time used on fixing the mesh and manually creating the surface.

DEFEATURING SOLIDS

Polygonica new version contains new functionality to remove small features such as holes, tunnels and spikes from a solid. An example application is in clash detection where small features may add hugely to the polygon count of a solid and therefore reduce performance, but these small features are not necessary for clash detection. Better performance would be achieved using a simplified version of the solid with such features removed.

HYBRID MANUFACTURING

MachineWorks has been supplying manufacturing software to the subtractive manufacturing industry since 1994. MachineWorks simulates the material being removed and the tool moving along the toolpath cutting away the material until the final part is shaped. Hybrid machines can perform both additive as well as subtractive operations in a single environment and so can MachineWorks Simulation Software. The Simulation of Hybrid Manufacturing shows the material being deposited by a Laser Metal Deposition (LMD) process and then the material being removed by the traditional CNC machining process.

David Knight, Sales Manager at MachineWorks says “Polygonica is adding more and more functions every day to offer software solutions for the rapidly changing requirements of the 3D printing industry. We think that formnext will be an ideal opportunity to showcase the latest additive manufacturing product developments in Polygonica”.

About Polygonica

Polygonica is a solid modelling software toolkit for processing polygon meshes. Built on MachineWorks' core engines, Polygonica's unique polygonal modelling technology takes advantage of 20 years of development providing automatic, fast and robust Boolean operations. Other algorithms in Polygonica allow solid healing, simplification, slicing, sectioning and spun profile calculation.

Polygonica has a wide range of applications such as CFD/FEA meshing, CAD/CAM/CAE, additive manufacturing where there is a requirement to repair defective models with vast numbers of polygons, rapid prototyping, reverse engineering, 3D movies and gaming, geo-exploring, urban modelling and other 3D digital applications.

www.polygonica.com