International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887) Volume 2 – No.2, May 2010 76 A Jewelry Modeler for the Fret-worked Bangles Vishal Gulati GJ University of Science and Technology, Hisar, India Puneet Tandon PDPM-Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design and Manufacturing, Jabalpur, India Hari Singh National Institute of Technology Kurukshetra, India ABSTRACT A parametric feature based jewelry modeler for designing and manufacturing of the Fret-worked bangles. These bangles are made from gold and adorned with fretwork designs. Fretwork is a decorative design that is either carved in low relief on a solid background, or cut out to adorn a jewelry item. Fretwork designs are viewed as features that are to be recurrently removed from the stock-solid bangles. The jewelry modeler supports diverse integrated manufacturing through computer controlled manufacturing. Fret-worked bangles are fabricated using rapid prototyping technique. Keywords Jewelry modeler, Bangles, Parametric Feature Based 1. INTRODUCTION Bangles are part of traditional jewelry, usually worn by women on each arm. In India, bangles made from gold have a religious connotation and a deep social significance. Mostly for an enhanced appeal, solid gold bangles have been studded with precious diamonds, gems and pearls or carved in low relief with decorative designs. These styles of exquisite bangles are very expensive because of having precious stones and heavy weight. This work produces a style of light-weight bangles, called Fret- worked (Figure 1), with a number of jewelry deigns with even higher numbers of variations. Fretwork is a decorative design that is either carved in low relief on a solid background, or cut out to adorn a jewelry item. Fret- worked bangles are gold jewelry items adorned with fretwork designs. In particular, this paper makes the technical contribution of developing a parametric feature based jewelry modeler for designing and manufacturing of the Fret-worked bangles. Figure 1: Fret-worked bangles The developed jewelry modeler is a basic parametric feature based CAD paradigm. Parametric modeling is incorporated to capture the designer’s intent , to get the variation in jewelry designs and to support customized jewelry design process. Also, by parameterizing the process, it is very easy to modify characteristics of the jewelry such as the size and the shape. In feature based design, features and stock-solids are the modeling components for which user define the key parameters. Features are placed to various faces of a stock-solid and desired product model can be built by applying the appropriate modeling operators such as the Boolean set operators. In the modeler, the fretwork designs are viewed as user defined features that are to be recurrently removed from the stock-solid bangles. The modeler is capable of producing real and tangible artifacts directly from 3-D solid CAD models. CAD/CAM technologies are used collaboratively from jewelry designing to fabricating stage. The jewelry modeler supports diverse integrated manufacturing through computer controlled manufacturing tools. Rapid prototyping technologies are increasingly being used in personnel embellishment, especially jewelry [1-3]. It can produce master pieces of intricate form of jewelry items from solid models. Lasers with the aid of CNC can also implement fretwork into flat and even 3-D gold jewelry types. The following parametric feature based commercial CAD systems have been developed for the purpose of jewelry designing: (i) Matrix (ii) Rhinoceros (iii) Jewel CAD (iv) Tech Jams (v) Art CAM Jewel Smith (vi) Jewel Space (vii) CAD Jewel 3D [4-7]. All of these systems have capabilities of good rendering and exporting models to rapid prototyping machines. But in majority of these systems, designing is performed manually using various tools and usually the design steps cannot be programmed to be executed automatically. This means that each different piece of jewelry would have to be created basically from the beginning. Some automated parametric systems have been developed where the jewelry design is expressed by a set of parameters and constraints and the user’s participation in the design process is through the dentition of the parameter values. ByzantineCAD has been developed for the designing of pierced medieval Byzantine jewelry [8-9]. A parametric voxel based approach has been presented to produce for stretch formed jewelry [10]. A unified jewelry modeler has been created for designing and creating carved jewelry of sophisticated craftsmanship [11]. A feature based CAD approach to re-engineering jewelry has also been presented [12-13]. These approaches are aiming to produce robust and accurate models that can either be manufactured or modified to create new jewelry pieces.