Automated conversion and classification of 3D CAD models for industrial data management and retrieval purposes.

Presenter: Kenton McHenry, NCSA
Authors: Kenton McHenry, Rob Kooper, Michal Ondrejcek, Jason Kastner and Peter Bajcsy

2009 NCSA Private Sector (PSP) Annual Meeting, May 13-15, NCSA, Illinois (2009)

This poster addresses the problems of understanding 3D CAD file conversions using third party software, conversion automation of a large volume of 3D files and comparative evaluations of 3D file content. The plethora of 3D file formats poses a difficult problem for long term retention and management of 3D files during design, construction, commissioning, in-service and retirement of products.

Our work is motivated by understanding conversions to several file formats vying to become the universal 3D format and by estimating the information loss of 3D format conversions over format and conversion software. We have designed a framework called Polyglot for converting 3D file formats and for measuring the information loss as one converts from one 3D file format to another. Polyglot provides capabilities for finding the conversion path, executing conversions, viewing 3D content interactively and scripting executions of a large volume of conversions.