Patent ID: 7366581

Claim:
A method for modifying a solid body in a computer-implemented solid modeling system, comprising: (a) performing a replace face operation on a target body by selecting one or more outgoing faces on the target body and replacing the selected faces with one or more incoming faces from an operator body, the replace face operation comprising: identifying the outgoing faces of the target body; identifying all faces of the target body that are adjacent to the outgoing faces; building extension faces for the identified faces to a bounding box of the operator body; making the target body a sheet by making all faces double-sided; marking all the faces of the target body, the extension faces of the target body, and incoming and outgoing faces of the target body and the incoming faces of the operator body with distinguishing attributes to identify the faces according to their origin and purpose; performing a non-regularized-unite on the outgoing faces of the target body, the incoming faces of the operator body, and the extension faces of the target body, in order to create a web body; simplifying the web body by eliminating the extension faces wherever possible by performing extension face culling; forming a universe body large enough to completely enclose the web body; generating a cellular topology graph, (ct-graph) from the web body and the universe body; examining the ct-graph to determine what cells to keep and what cells to discard by performing cell culling, in order to create a final graph; and creating a final body from the final graph; and (b) storing or displaying the created final body.