Product development for Chinese calligraphy using reverse engineering and rapid prototyping

Chinese calligraphy is considered to be one of the most beautiful and meaningful patterns in the world. Calligraphy is an art dating back to the earliest day of Chinese history, and widely practised throughout ancient China even to recent days. Owing to the passage of time, many old carvings of stamp characters have gradually faded. How to preserve these old Chinese cultural artifacts will be some crucial issues for today. Reverse engineering (RE) and rapid prototyping (RP) technology are considered effective tools for product development. This research combines RE, grey prediction theory in pattern processing, geometric modeling for constructing the characters of Chinese calligraphy and RP for model making. First, the written Chinese calligraphy is scanned by a scanner. By using image processing, the contours of the Chinese characters can be detected. The contours for the characters then turn out to be point data which can be easily processed in any computer aided design (CAD) software by using B-Spline curves to fit the points. An example is demonstrated by writing a Chinese compound word 'the fortune and treasure are coming' to show the process. Finally, a RP model is fabricated to show various applications for the products in Chinese calligraphy pattern. By this research, the gap between the Chinese calligraphy in handicraft and digital virtual design can be realized. More usefully, with this research the aesthetic aspects in the characters can be preserved.