Patent ID: 8896598

Claim:
A method to cause a computer aided design station to render a clipped three-dimensional modeled object, comprising: generating a three-dimensional modeled object designed with the computer-aided design station; partitioning the three-dimensional modeled object into a three-dimensional space having a plurality of regions, wherein the shape of the plurality of regions is selected from a group of tetrahedron, cube, and rhombohedron; receiving one or more clipping shapes each having one or more connected planes, each plane including a clipping domain indicator on a side thereof to indicate a clipping direction; generating one or more clipping sections based on the one or more clipping shapes and partitioning the regions into a plurality of sub-regions as a function of intersections between the clipping sections and already partitioned regions and sub-regions of the three-dimensional space, wherein the shape of the plurality of sub-regions are the same as the shape of the plurality of regions, and wherein the plurality of sub-regions are defined by points that include intersection points created by the intersections; generating, based in part on the partitioning of the regions, at least one clipped volume domain having an envelope composed of planar faces, the envelope representing a planar boundary of the clipped volume domain; projecting the envelope of the at least one clipped volume domain on a screen plane according to a first viewpoint; determining, according to each pixel of the screen plane with respect to the first viewpoint, which faces of the envelope are projected onto each pixel; and rendering, by a processor of the computer aided design station and according to the first viewpoint, the three-dimensional modeled object as clipped based on the clipped volume domain and results of the determining.