Industrial esthetic designers typically produce hand-drawn sketches in the form of orthographic
projections. A subsequent translation from 2D-drawings to 3D-models is usually necessary. This
involves a considerably time consuming process, so that some automation is advisable.
Common approaches to this ‘‘reconstruction problem’’ start directly from ‘‘exact’’ 2D vector
representations or try to vectorize 2D raster images prior to the reconstruction phase. These approaches,
however, typically fail to deal with free form geometries like the ones commonly found in esthetic
industrial design.
This work presents a new methodology suitable for free form geometries, comprising the generation
and processing of a 3D voxel image obtained from a hand drawing, the creation of a set of 3D curves
fitting the voxel image and the automatic generation of surface patches on the resulting curve network.
Several case studies are also presented in order to emphasize and discuss strengths and weaknesses of
the proposed method.