A History-Independent Modelling-Oriented Approach to Solve Geometric Constraints Between Features in 3D Space

History-independent modelling systems are more flexible than history-based ones. They let designers manipulate the model in a more associative, rather than prescribed, way. In this paper, an approach based on 2D geometric constraint solving and a topological entity naming mechanism (TENM) is presented to solve the geometric constraints between features in 3D space. Firstly, in order to break the unidirectional dependency between features in a history-based modelling system, a data structure named feature constraint graph(FCG) is adopted to represent the geometric constraints between features in 3D space. Then a solving sequence is obtained using degree-of-freedom (DOF) based graph analysis. And finally, during the evaluation of the solving sequence, the dimensions in 3D space are mapped to 2D space, the dimensions in 3D space are satisfied indirectly by solving the corresponding 2D geometric constraint system. An example is given to illustrate the process of our approach.