INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, BOMBAY

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Course : ME-617 Rapid Product Development L-T-P-C : 3-0-0-6

Instructor : K.P. Karunakaran I Semester 2012-13
Date : November 26, 2012 (Monday) 2:30PM Duration : 3 hrs.
Instructions: Roll No
This is a question paper cum answer book. All
answers shall be written only in the space provided. Marks /100
Write your roll number only.

End Semester Examination

Part A
(1 mark each)

1. Distinguish between a Geometric Modeler and a Geometric Modeling Kernel. Give an

example for each.

2. Distinguish between Geometric Modeling and Reverse Engineering in one sentence.

Geometric Modeling creates the object from scratch whereas Reverse Engineering creates
the Geometric Model of the physical object (through digitizing). The ultimate goal in both
is the creation of the geometric model, i.e., virtual object.

3. Name a popular package for each of the following functions:

Feature-Based Modeling Pro/Engineer, SolidWorks
CFD Fluent
PLM TeamCentre (Siemens), Ennovia or Matrix One (Dassault),
WindChill (PTC)
NC verification VeriCut, VirtualNC

4. Name the two aspects that distinguish between Product Design and Industrial Design.
i. Aesthetics
ii. Ergonomics

5. What are the 3 phases of design according to Fisher?

i. Conceptual design
ii. Configurational design
iii. Detailed design

6. The life of a product, and hence the time available for its development, are diminishing. Give two
reasons for this.
i. Fast changing taste of the increasingly affluent customers
ii. Technological obsolescence.

7. What are the two distinct phases of automation in manufacturing?

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 i. Automation of the process
ii. Automation of the process planning.

8. List the three geometric representation schemes in the increasing order of topological information.
i. Wire-frame
ii. Surface
iii. Solid

9. Distinguish between a surface model and B-Rep.

No point is duplicated. This results in proper stitching or water tight model; i.e., no
overlaps or gaps.
B-Rep has the additional topology of outward normal.

10. Storage of redundancy in B-Rep causes increase/decrease in space complexity and

increase/decrease in time complexity (strike off the wrong option).

11. The memory occupied by octree is proportional to the surface area of the object.

12. Octree cannot handle self-intersecting/non-manifold objects (strike off the wrong option).

13. The simplest solid representation suitable to represent gradient objects is voxel rep.

14. A CNC machine is a vector device and a laser printer is a raster device.

15. The ratio of dots per unit length on the shadow mask to dots per unit length on the
phosphor screen is 1:3.

16. State the 4 characteristics of a VR system that enables immersive experience?

i. Real time response
ii. Stereo-vision
iii. Intuitive spontaneous and effortless interaction
iv. Multimodal interaction

17. Give two reasons for fixing redundant optical markers on the objects to be tracked.
i. When some markers of an object may be covered by the user or other objects,
redundant markers help in identifying them in spite of this.
ii. More number of markers help in the unique identification.

18. The approximate values of human latencies for vision and touch in ms are 125ms and
1ms respectively.

19. What is meant by Edge Management in the context of CAVE?

In order to get wider field of view, CAVE employs multiple displays, the scene for each
being created by different projectors. The 3D scene has to be divided for each of them and
projected by the respective projectors such that the user does not feel them as multiple
displays. For this purpose, the ending scene of one display shall exactly match with the
starting scene of the next display. Achieving this through dividing the 3D space and fine
tuning the display systems is known as edge management.

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20. Distinguish between the two types of active and passive goggles in the context of stereo-
vision.

Active shutter goggles required electronics and hence is costly. Passive goggles used
filters. The two types of passive goggles are simple color filters and polarized filters.

21. Bring out the subtle difference between 3D vision and stereo-vision.

In stereo-vision, the image of left and right eyes are projected on to the display surface
(either simultaneously or alternately) and In 3D vision, the display appears in 3D and
hence no need to wear any goggle.

22. What is boom in the context of VR/AR and why did it not become popular?

Boom is one of the stereo-vision devices. As the Head Mounted Device (HMD) based on
two CRTs was too heavy, it was later mounted on a stand and the user viewed the CRTs
using a binocular and manipulated the stand by hand. This is known as boom. Since CRTs
were shortly replaced by LCDs in HMDs, it became very light and hence the stand was
no longer required.

23. Distinguish between the terms tactile and haptic.

Haptic is the generic term to denote both tactile and force sensing. So, tactile is a subset
of haptic.

24. Name two applications in engineering other than RP where divide-and-conquer strategy is
used.
i. FEA
ii. CSG

25. What is the other reason than productivity for providing huge machines with multiples
tool heads?

Active spare. Rather than a total failure of the machine, say when spindle fails, it will
continue to operate, albeit at a lower efficiency if there are multiple spindles.

26. What feature of a CNC machine, as compared to the conventional machine, is responsible
for its high flexibility?

Independent drive for each axis.

27. List the three types of data embedded in the NC post-processor.

i. Process
ii. Kinematics
iii. Format or syntax of the controller

28. List the three factors limiting the MRR of a CNC machine.

i. Cutting tool material

ii. Speed of machine tool
iii. CAM software

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29. Give the two reasons why is NC simulation required?
i. Verification (or conformance) including collision avoidance
ii. Optimization of cutting parameters

30. While VeriCUT optimizes end milling path by maintaining constant MRR, the correction
factor is required only when the tool goes uphill/downhill/both sides/neither side (strike
off the wrong option).

31. There are 2 correct answers. Tick both:

a. When volumetric NC simulation using image-space representation is in progress, it

can be viewed from any direction dynamically.
b. When volumetric NC simulation using general stick-like voxel representation is in
progress, it can be viewed from any direction dynamically.
c. Image-space representation is the fastest for volumetric NC simulation.
d. General voxel representation is the fastest for volumetric NC simulation.
e. Octree representation is the fastest for volumetric NC simulation.
f. Object is represented in the form of a bundle of sticks in octree representation.

b&c

32. Why is BRep representation not suitable for volumetric NC simulation?

Very high memory consumption.

33. Force modeling in VeriCUT is analytical/numerical/empirical/hybrid (strike off the wrong

option).

34. Distinguish among the terms online, offline and in-situ.

Online: Action takes place when the process is going on (such as measurement while
machining).

Offline:Action takes place after the process is over and the job taken to another place/
equipment (such as measurement on a CMM after machining).

In-situ: Action takes place when the process is over but on the same equipoment (such as
measurement on the same CNC machine before removing).

35. Arrange [X-ray, CT scan, MRI, Ultrasonic scan] in the order of decreasing risks.

[Ultrasonic scan, MRI, CT scan, X-ray]

Part B
(Marks mentioned against each question)

1. Present the characteristics of the industrial scenario in the past and presently in the form of the
following table: [3]
Feature Past Present

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 Economy based on Protected economy Open economy
the type of Govt.
protection
Type of Competition Local Global
Market is dictated by Seller Buyer
fn(Profit, Price, Cost) Price = (Cost + Profit) Cost Profit = Price Cost
Definition of quality Conformance to design Customer delight
One word to define Complacence Competition
the attitude

2. Refer the figure on the right side. Name each of the four project types and give an
example for each: [2]
Existing Product New Product
Name: Updating Name:
Replacement Supplementing
Existing Example: Annual Example: Cell phone
Market/ release after taking with camera, radio
Applications care of customer etc.
feedback and minor
improvements.
Name: Adaptation Name:
Example: European Diversification
New car for India and
Market/ vice versa Example: An
Applications automotive company
starting an IT
division

3. Compare the features of prototype manufacture and regular manufacture: [2]

Prototype Manufacture Regular Manufacture
Time is more important than money Cost-sensitive.
It needs to serve only a shorter life. It requires longer life.
As little tooling as possible is used Heavily dependent on tooling such as
injection molds.
Quality can be compromised as customer Quality is essential as customer will use it.
does not use.

4. Compare the behavior of competition with the way a python deals with its prey. List at
least four features of business environment that are analogous to breathing. [2]

When a python captures an animal, it tightens it a little every time the animal exhales
leaving less and less room for subsequent breathing till the prey finally dies of
suffocation. The cycles similar to breathing occur in organizations also; [i] the inventory
of raw materials, work in progress and finished products fluctuate, [ii] cash flow
fluctuates, [iii] machines fail, [iv] manpower attrition and so on. Whenever each of these
reaches a low level, the competitors loose no time to take away the market share just as
the python does. Therefore, organizations can never remain complacent with their current
performance.

5. Identify the following solid representations: [2]

The most user-friendly FBM

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 The most system friendly BRep
The simplest CSG or FBM
In which the feature information Spatial Decomposition (voxel, stick, octree
irretrievably lost etc.)

6. Write whatever you know about double buffering? [4]

Picture processing includes

Carrying out the viewing transformation for the given viewing conditions of zoom,
rotate and pan
Clipping for the window,
Hidden line and hidden surface removal,
Shadow calculation,
Shading and rendering computations with respect to various lighting arrangements
and finally mapping to the screen coordinates.
Saves the resulting data as a bit map in the computer's one of the display buffers while
display is created from the other (This is known as double buffering).

7. Distinguish between geometry and topology. List all the geometric and topological
entities of an axis-aligned unit cube. [4]

Geometry describes the location and size of entities. Examples are coordinates of a point
and position and radius of a circle . Topology ells how the entities are connected with one
another. It describes how faces are bounded by edges, how edges are shared by faces, how
vertices are shared by edges and so on.

Representation Geometry Topology

Wire frame 8 corners, viz., p0=(0,0,0),
p1=(1,0,0), p2=(0,1,0), p3=(1,1,0),
p4=(0,0,1), p5=(1,0,1), p6=(0,1,1),
p7=(1,1,1)
12 Edges: e0=[ p0, p1], e1=[ p0,
p2], e2=[ p1, p3], e3=[ p2, p3],
e4=[ p4, p5], e5=[ p4, p6], e6=[ p5,
p7], e7=[ p6, p7], e8=[ p0, p4],
e9=[ p1, p5], e10=[ p3, p7], e11=[ p2,
p6],

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 Surface The above 12 Edges and
4 faces: f0=[ e0, e2, e3, e1], f1=[ e4,
e6, e7, e5], f2=[ e0, e9, e4, e8],
f3=[ e2, e10, e6, e9], f4=[ e3, e10, e7,
e11], f5=[ e1, e11, e5, e8]
Solid In addition to the above 12 edges
and 6 faces, direction of material
will be given by through outward
normals corresponding each face.
n0=(0,0,-1), n1=(0,0,1), n2=(0,-
1,0), n3=(1,0,0), n4=(0,1,0), n5=(-
1,0,0)

8. A solid cylinder of 100 units diameter and 300 units length has a concentric through-and-
through hole of 50 units diameter. Its axis and bottom face respectively coincide with Z
axis and XY plane. Express mathematically all the half spaces defining the B-Rep of this
object. [2]

625<=x^2+y^2 <= 2500 , z=0

625<=x^2+y^2 <= 2500, z=300
x^2+y^2=625, 0<=z<=300
x^2+y^2=2500, 0<=z<=300

9. 3 bit-planes are available for each of the basic colors. Draw a block diagram that shows
the flow of the information stored in these planes onto the screen. What will be the
minimum video memory required for such a display with a resolution of 800 x 600 [5]

The above figure to be modified to have 3 planes for each color (9 in total)

Video memory required = 800 (x pixels) x 600 (y pixels) x 3 (bits/color) x 3 (colors) x 2

(double buffer) = 768 bits = 8640000 bits = 1080000 bytes = 1.08 Mb.

10. In the context of the cybernetic implementation of the sense of sound, identify the
emitter(s) and receiver(s) and point out the mismatch of their numbers vis-a-vis animals
along with suitable explanation for the same. [2]

Receivers [1 mic vs. 2 ears]

Transmitters [2 speakers vs. 1 mouth].

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 Two ears are requires to sense the location of the source of sound.

11. In the context of the cybernetic implementation of the sense of vision, identify the
emitter(s) and receiver(s) and point out the mismatch of their numbers vis-a-vis animals
along with suitable explanation for the same. [2]

Receivers [1/2 cameras vs. 2 eyes]

Transmitters [1 display vs. none].

Two camera/eyes are required for seeing 3D through depth understanding.

We do not create any scene. We only see them.

12. Briefly explain at least four methods adopted to achieve real-time performance. [4]
i. Triangular faceted geometric input: The graphics hardware is optimized for
processing triangles. So, the geometric input to VR systems is in terms of
triangles. The commonly used format is Virtual Reality Mark up Language
(VRML).
ii. Preliminary checks such as Bounding box, bounding sphere, convex hull etc.
iii. View volume culling: Only the objects contained in the current view point are
processed.
iv. Optimization with level of details: The same object is stored in multiple
resolutions. The appropriate resolution is used depending on the viewpoint in
order to minimize the number of triangles to be processed.
v. Environment mapping: Pre-calculation of rendering over spheres of discrete sizes
and mapping these values on the actual scene.
vi. Parallel processing multiple chips on the same machine or use of clusters.
vii. Compute only for the pixels affected in the scene.

13. Mention at least four reasons for the slow progress in haptic rendering. [2]
i. Tactile sensing requires miniature sensors.
ii. The same point has to sense more than one phenomenon such as tiny force, heat
etc. In other words, more than one type of sensor is required at the same point.
iii. The tactile sensing has a very small latency of about 1 ms. This means a very fast
computing.
iv. Haptic rendering imposes actual force on the user. So it is not virtual. So, it could
defeat the purpose of VR as they are too real to be safe. This is because as we are
unable to stimulate the concerned nerves directly yet in order to give those sensory
feedback.

14. What is registration? What are its purposes in VR and AR? Which one between VR and
AR requires more precise registration and why? How is higher precision achieved? [4]

AR has virtual and real objects. Registration refers to aligning both of these. In VR, it is
only giving a feel of immersion and hence accuracy of registration or tracking is not
critical in VR. It has to be very accurate in AR as it is not to calculate a new viewpoint
based on head movement but to align both the virtual and real objects. In AR, high
accuracy in registration is achieved by pasting accurately markers of specific shape and
size at known locations on the physical objects and tracking them.

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15. Explain the application of AR for surgery of brain tumour. [3]

During the brain surgery for removing a tumor, the head around the tumor is shaved and
grid lines are drawn with an appropriate ink compatible with Magnetic Resonance
Imaging (MRI). When MRI scan is taken in this condition, the tumor is captured along
with the grid lines which help in registration. When the surgeon operates the actual tumor,
he not only sees the physical tumor but also the 3D MRI image superimposed. So,
although the physical tumor may not be clear due to less incision and presence of various
fluids around (blood, mucus etc.), the presence of its image will help him perform the
operation more precisely. This helps in reducing the operation time as well as its
accuracy.

16. Expand the following acronyms: [3]

DNC-I Direct Numerical Control
DNC-II Distributed Numerical Control
APC Automatic Pallet Changer
AGV Automatically Guided Vehicle
AS/RS Automatic Storage/ Retrieval System
APT Automatically Programmed Tool

17. What are the maximum numbers of independent axes required for a CNC milling
machine and wire EDM machine respectively? Justify each answer. [2]

CNC milling: 5. Out of 6 d.o.f., spindle rotation is passive.

wire EDM: 4. Out of 6 d.o.f., there is no wire rotation and it is of infinite length.

18. For a metallic component, when the quantity required is one or two, RP for metallic
objects (DMLS/LENS/Arcam ) can be used; when the quantity is little larger,
Investment Casting can be used; for mass production, die casting is preferred. Choose
your answers from [(i) RP for metallic objects (DMLS/LENS/Arcam ), (ii) Investment

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 Casting, (iii) Die Casting, (iv) Injection Molding]. Justify your answer in a few lines. [3]

RP has linear cost with quantity. So not suitable beyond one or two pieces.
Investment Casting is time consuming compared to die casting. So, investment for
low quantity and die casting for large quantity.

19. What is LENS? Explain how it works. Briefly explain how LENS can make gradient
metallic objects. [3]

LENS stands for Laser Engineered Net Shaping.

This is a powder-feed or deposition process. While the laser traverses the section of the
slice, metal powder from multiple nozzles around it fall into the moving molten pool and
get integrated.

By conveying different powders from different nozzles and controlling their flow rates
differentially, gradient objects can be made.

20. Compare between registrations used in RE and AR. [2]

In RE, clouds of points are measured in different settings. Registration is required to bring
them to a common frame of reference. This is done using markers.

In AR, it is for aligning the virtual object with the real one. For this purpose, the markers
on real object are scanned while creating the virtual object.

21. Compare contact and non-contact scanning systems in the context of accuracy, speed and feature
limitation. Also give three examples for each. [2]
Contact Non-contact
Accuracy (high/low) High Low
Speed (high/low) Low High
Any limitations on Soft objects cannot be Hidden features and
the measurable measured. transparent are difficult,
feature particularly in optical systems.
Three examples for i. CMM using probes i. White light scanning
each ii. Manual measurements ii. HandiScan
iii. Touch probe on a CNC iii. Photogrammetry
machine iv. Laser scanning
v. Industrial CT scan

22. Distinguish between White Light Scanning and Handiscan. [3]

Feature White Light Scanning Handiscan
Nature of light Visible white light. Strips of white Laser. It also projects a visible
(source and and dark light. The width of these red cross to indicate the place
pattern) strips narrow down every time. being scanned.
Relative ease of Low High
use
Relative size of Large Small
object scanned
Ability to scan Yes/ No Yes/ No
objects along

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 with their color

23. Name the suitable instrument for measuring each of the following manually. Note that
these are not standard dimensions that can be measured with Go - No Go gauges: [4]

1. External diameter in the range of 30-40mm within a resolution of 0.02mm.

Vernier calipers

2. External diameter in the range of 30-40mm within a resolution of 0.002mm.

Micrometer

3. The distance between two parallel flat surfaces of a component in the range of 300-
350mm with a resolution of 0.02mm.

Vernier calipers

4. Circular hole in the range of 30-40mm within a resolution of 0.002mm.

Bore gauge (three-point micrometer)

5. External threads

Thread gauge (Go/ No Go type)

2-pin/3-pin method

6. Width and depth of a straight key way

Vernier calipers

7. Radius of a spherical surface

Spherometer

8. Surface finish.

Perthometer

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