A Method for Model Thickness Analysis in Pro/E Environment

Abstract

Wall thickness has a direct impact on the appearance, performance and cost of a part, wall thickness analysis is important (sometimes essential) to examine and improve the manufacturability of a part after the design is complete. The current method of wall thickness analysis in pro/Engineering environment is to establish equally spaced cross-sections in different directions, which is inefficient and can be error prone. This paper details a method to analysis wall thickness automatically, which includes format conversion (from prt to stl), octree decomposition and ray-tracing to obtain thickness values, color rendering according to thickness values, this method provides an overall intuitive display of the model and improves the thickness analysis efficiency.