Swept surface synthesis with visibility

The visibility of a surface has wide applications in manufacturing where ac cessibility of the workpiece to the processing agent is of critical importa nce. A surface is visible to a direction d if for every point on the surfac e a line-of-sight can be established along d Important applications, such a s die-face design, arise in manufacturing where surfaces must be constructe d visible to a given direction. In this paper we present a family of swept surfaces with built-in visibility. In particular, methods are laid our to b uild translational, rotational and spined sweeps visible to a given directi on by sweeping monotone section curves. In these methods, minimal limitatio ns are imposed besides those needed to avoid surface singularities. To incr ease modeling flexibility, the methods are extended to sweeps with distinct end sections and nonuniform scaling functions. [S1087-1357(00)00103-9].