Medial Object

The medial object of a solid is a skeletal representation providing a comprehensive source of information for a variety of geometric reasoning applications.


Example medial object of an automotive piston


The medial object is constructed by rolling a disc around inside a face, or a sphere inside a volume. The locus of the centre of the maximal diameter disc/sphere forms the medial object.
The medial object also carries radius information, and is thus a complete representation of the original object.
For a full technical description, see the Transcendata Europe Medial Object Technical Paper.
Typical applications include:

• mid surface computation
• finite element meshing subdivision
• machine tool cutter path definition
• feature recognition
• automatic model defeaturing
• shelling a volume model

The medial object is available as an option for CADfix, or as a separate module with API access.


Example medial object of a face


Example medial object of a volume