Set-based queries for multiscale shape-material modeling

Abstract: Multiscale structures are becoming increasingly prevalent in the field of mechanical design. The variety of fine-scale structures and their respective representations results in an interoperability challenge. To address this, a query-based API was recently proposed which allows different representations to be combined across the scales for multiscale structures modeling. The query-based approach is fully parallelizable and has a low memory footprint; however, this architecture requires repeated evaluation of the fine-scale structures locally for each individual query. While this overhead is manageable for simpler fine-scale structures such as parametric lattice structures, it is problematic for structures requiring non-trivial computations, such as Voronoi foam structures. In this paper, we develop a set-based query that retains the compatibility and usability of the point-based query while leveraging locality between multiple point-based queries to provide a significant speedup and further decrease the memory consumption for common applications, including visualization and slicing for manufacturing planning. We first define the general set-based query that consolidates multiple point-based queries at arbitrary locations. We then implement specialized preprocessing methods for different types of fine-scale structures which are otherwise inefficient with the point-based query. Finally, we apply the set-based query to downstream applications such as ray-casting and slicing, increasing their performance by an order of magnitude. The overall improvements result in the generation and rendering of complex fine-scale structures such as Voronoi foams at interactive frame rates on the CPU.