The development of a three-dimensional imaging system and its application in computer aided design workstations

This paper details the application of a three dimensional imaging system known as planar contour imaging (PCI) to the presentation of images created by computer aided design (CAD) software. The three dimensional computational models were generated within a commercially available CAD/CAM software package from Delcam plc and then converted to stereo lithographic (.stl) format. The .stl file was then converted into a real, three dimensional, image by PCI. It was found that, in the same way that a user looks at a two dimensional image, the selection of the correct type and amount of data presented to the viewer was critical. However, when the image was refined, the three dimensional image was found to produce an impressive representation of the computational dataset.