Patent ID: 8217938

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for calculating an orientation for an item, the method comprising: (i) receiving, in a computer, a mesh representation of an item, the mesh having a plurality of elements and nodes; (ii) constructing, by the computer, a bounding cube which encompasses the mesh; (iii) dividing, by the computer, a bounding cube into a plurality of voxel elements; (iv) determining, by the computer, which of the plurality of voxel elements intersect with the mesh, wherein a voxel representation of the item is defined by the voxel elements that intersect with the mesh; (v) calculating, by the computer, one or more input values based on the voxel representation of the item to determine an orientation of the item; (vi) inputting the voxel representation input values to a statistical computation to obtain a statistical part orientation output; (vii) determining, by the computer, the orientation of the item based on the statistical part orientation output.