3D reconstruction of paper based assembly drawings: State of the art and approach

Abstract

Engineering solutions are generally documented in assembly and part drawings and bill of materials. A great benefit, qualitatively and commercially, can be achieved if these paper based storages can be transformed into digital information archives. The process of this transformation is called reconstruction. The reconstruction process of paper based assembly drawings consists of four steps: digitization; vectorization/interpretation; 3D reconstruction of the parts and the 3D reconstruction of the assembly. This paper evaluates existing commercial systems worldwide for interpretation of paper based mechanical engineering drawings. For a complete reconstruction process a 3D reconstruction is needed. This functionality is already supported by some CAD systems to a certain extent, but it still remains a major topic of research work. One CAD system which converts 2D CAD models into 3D CAD models is presented. Finally, after the reconstruction of the parts the whole assembly can be reconstructed. Until now, no system for the automatic reconstruction of assemblies is available. In our paper we present a general approach for automatic reconstruction of 3D assembly model data by interpretation of mechanical engineering 2D assembly drawings, their part drawings, and the bill of materials.