Study on Digital Style Design — System to Improve Surface Quality Based on Highlight Lines —

This paper deals with a style design system developed for creating shapes with required highlight lines input by the computer mouse. Highlight lines are a very important parameter for evaluating the aesthetic shape of products. The system allows simple construction of high quality surfaces in a virtual space by evaluating the shapes of highlight lines. This paper also proposes methods to define an evolute representing the curvature centers of a section of a surface by using highlight line information, and clarifies that an involute of an evolute is the section having a shape with the required highlight lines. Process methods to define an evolute of the shape of a modified section are classified according to the changing patterns of curvature. The system was developed by implementing the algorithm based on the proposed method, and the usefulness of the system was confirmed by basic tests.