Abstract

In this paper, the techniques for graphic simulation of material removal process are described. The concepts of the bounding box and base plane are proposed. With these concepts, a real-time shaded display of a Z-map model being milled by a cutting tool following an NC path can be implemented very efficiently. The base planes make it possible to detect the visible face of Z-map model effectively. And the bounding box of tool sweep volume provides minimum area of screen to be updated. The proposed techniques are suitable for implementation in raster graphic device and need a few memories and a small amount of calculation. Proposed method is written in C and executable on MS-Windows95 and Window-NT.

Keywords

• Bounding box;
• Base plane;
• NC cut simulation;
• Virtual machining;
• Visible check;
• Z-map