Patent ID: 7321364

Claim:
A computer implemented system, comprising: a CAD system that generates a CAD model for an assembly including at least one mechanical part, said CAD model producing a list of trimmed surfaces for each said part that form a bounded analytic representation of a high order geometry surface in space; a software tool that discretizes the part to produce a first list of nodes that lie on the part and a second list of nodes that lie in a void space; a translation program that translates the lists of trimmed surfaces and nodes into a surface-based combinatorial geometry (SBCG) format including a list of analytic surfaces having bounding surfaces and ambiguity surfaces and a well-posed zoning statement and optimizing the well-posed zoning statement to eliminate redundant analytic surfaces and merge zones subject to a constraint that the zoning statement remain well-posed; and a ray-tracing program that operates on data in the SBCG format for said at least one mechanical part to analyze non-mechanical properties of the assembly.