System to directly slice Trimmed-NURBS
IsoSlicer is a custom-made software that takes a trimmed-Nurbs surface and produces sample points that represent the slicing curves in multiple layers as part of the 3D printing pipeline. The visualization in the software is based on the triangle scanline algorithm with Phong Illumination and shading, with z-buffer algorithm for visibility. The software was coded in C++ using the Embarcadero C++Builder IDE in the Windows 11 system. Its URL is: https://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder
The C++Builder 12 Community Edition is free for academic purposes. It can be found at: https://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder/starter
You just need to fill out a small form and press the Download button. Then you follow the instructions that will appear.
To run the IsoSlicer, you just need to download all listed files into any local directory, and click twice in the file IsoSlicer-1.0.cbproj or start the C++Builder IDE and go to File->Open Project (Ctrl F11), and select this file in the chosen directory. You then press Run button, or Ctrl+Shift+F9. To see the source codes, you go to View->Units (Ctrl+F12).
When runnning, you need to make a few selections to get what Figure1.jpg and Figure2.jpg show (they correspond to Figure 17 of the article):
1.Load a texture image:
Select "Camera" Tab. Figure0.jpg shows the selected "Camera" tab. You can pick "Phong Shading with Texture". Then you load the texture from the "textures" directory (a bmp file) inside the "dataset" directory. Choose "Trimmed-white-marble.bmp"
2.Render the Utah Teapot:
Figure1.jpg shows the options in the "NURBS" tab. In the "Slicing" area select "zbuffer" and "Trim" and press the button "Multiple NURBS" in the "Rendering NURBS" area. In the "multiple_patches" directory (inside "dataset") select the file "Multiple-UtahTeapot.txt".
3.Present the slicing samples over the rendered image:
In the slicing area, press the button "Multiple NURBS-Multilayer" and select in the "multiple_patches" directory the same file "Multiple-UtahTeapot.txt" to get what Figure1.jpg shows.
Obs: To get what Figure2.jpg shows, in the "Slicing" area modify the epsilon field to '0.005' and the delta field to '0.05', and repeat steps 1,2 and 3.
That's it! You can watch a video showing these steps: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kBLubybHPWZZzQWmrktu5UvKsmGgn4p9/view?userstoinvite=none
You can change several parameters to change the views, objects and textures. The trimming area is the pure black region in the texture file. You can show a single NURBS by pressing the button "Load a NURBS" (files in the "single-patch" directory inside dataset), and render it with the button "Single NURBS". Commas (',') are used to indicate decimal digits (ex: 0,234 is 0.234). You can see isocurves with their control points by using "Single Isocurve", "W/ Ctrl points", with the parametric value given in "isovalue" (it has to be confined in the parametric limits). You may choose the between "u-family" or "v-family" of isocurves. Depending on their shape being close to a plane of the type Z=h, one may produce better results than the other.