A METHOD OF INTEGRATING A BLEND OR CHAMFER SURFACE REPLACING AN EDGE OF A GEOMETRICAL BODY INTO A SOLID MODEL

In a method of integrating a blend or a chamfer surface replacing an edge of a geometrical body into a solid model, a primary blend or chamfer surface is defined and the primary boundaries between the primary surface and the body are calculated. Then the primary boundaries are trimmed and edges adjacent to the edge to be replaced will be removed if the edges are determined to be obsolete, thus leaving the body in a geometrically inconsistent state. Further, a new primary blend or chamfer face is created on the basis of the primary surface by substituting the edge to be removed by new edges forming a new boundary of the new primary face. For each vertex of the edge to be removed, it is checked whether the body is geometrically inconsistent around the vertex and if this is the case the geometry of the body will be trimmed around the vertex by collecting all gaps of the primary face wherein a gap is defined by topologically adjacent edges which do not fit geometrically. For each gap a trimming path consisting of a sequence of curve segments becoming a part of the face is calculated and a new topology is created. Then all gaps on secondary, non-blend or non-chamfer surfaces around the vertex are collected and the calculation of a trimming path and the creation of topology is repeated for all secondary faces of the body.