Building Editable Free-form Models from Unstructured Point Clouds

We present a novel approach to reconstructing the surface of a 3D object using a point cloud of its surface scan. The objective is to obtain an editable CAD model that is manufacturable and describes accurately the structure and topology of the point cloud. The point cloud is sliced into cross sections. Each cross section is represented as a 2D point set. Then, a collection of interpolating curves is computed that describes each cross section accurately, using computational geometry methods on the corresponding point set. The organized point set for the surface reconstruction is obtained from these curves. Freeform transformations may also be applied, allowing high level global editing of the final object.