Computing swept volumes

The swept volume problem is practical, difficult and interesting enough to have received a great deal of attention over the years, and the literature contains much discussion of methods for computing swept volumes in many situations. The method presented here permits an arbitrary polyhedral object (given in a typical boundary representation) to be swept through an arbitrary trajectory. A polyhedral approximation to the volume swept by this moving object is computed and output in a typical boundary representation. A number of examples are presented demonstrating the practicality of this method. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.