Adaptive direct slicing of the solid model for rapid prototyping

The geometric description used to represent solid objects significantly affects the accuracy and quality of the final parts produced with rapid prototyping (RP) technology. This paper discusses the alternative method of adaptive direct slicing for RP. Direct slicing generates precise contours for each layer from the solid model and avoids an intermediate representation. Adaptive slicing modifies the layer thickness to take into account the curvature of the surface of the solid model in the vertical direction, to alleviate the staircase effect, and to decrease the number of layers. Thereby, adaptive direct slicing potentially enables part fabrication with higher accuracy and production efficiency. This paper presents a new, practical approach to adaptive direct slicing based on the area deviation ratio. The slicing strategy and algorithm are also described. The corresponding procedure was implemented and tested on Windows 95/98 and NT 4.0 with AutoCAD R14.