| Rapid Prototyping is available to allow designers to quickly have CAD designs transformed into real parts. Time compression is the result of the investment an institution makes in a rapid prototyping machine. This research is intended to enhance this time compression, focusing on the use of a selective laser sintering machine. In order to reduce time and use as much material as possible in a single build, it is advantageous to build many parts simultaneously. This research studies an approach to design a software package to provide this ability.; First, it provides visualization as any CAD software would. This allows the user to have a real sense of how the parts will be build. It also gives the user the ability to manipulate parts in preparation for a build. Again, this is offered by current technology. This offering of this research is to enable automated packing of any number of parts. Through the use of networked communications, this system works with a powerful packing algorithm on a remote machine. In addition it works with an unpacking algorithm on a separate machine. This distributes the work of the computationally intensive algorithms. Also, the logic of these algorithms is separated from the user's client software. Overall time compression will be enhanced because more parts will be packed, and the entire procedure will take very little user intervention. |
