Compact explosion diagrams

Abstract

This paper presents a system to automatically generate compact explosion diagrams. Inspired by handmade illustrations, our approach reduces the complexity of an explosion diagram by rendering an exploded view only for a subset of the assemblies of an object. However, the exploded views are chosen so that they allow inference of the remaining unexploded assemblies of the entire 3D model. In particular, our approach demonstrates the assembly of a set of identical groups of parts, by presenting an exploded view only for a single representative. In order to identify the representatives, our system automatically searches for recurring subassemblies. It selects representatives depending on a quality evaluation of their potential exploded view. Our system takes into account visibility information of both the exploded view of a potential representative as well as visibility information of the remaining unexploded assemblies. This allows rendering a balanced compact explosion diagram, consisting of a clear presentation of the exploded representatives as well as the unexploded remaining assemblies. Since representatives may interfere with one another, our system furthermore optimizes combinations of representatives. Throughout this paper we show a number of examples, which have all been rendered from unmodified 3D CAD models.