Hysteresis in Interoperability: Workflows Involving Multiple Representations of 3D Models

Various 3D solid model representation schemes are developed to capture and process geometrical information of physical 3D objects as accurately and precisely as possible with the consideration of storage and computational complexity. These representation schemes are error prone, and their limitations prohibit them to capture all the pertinent information perfectly for a complex 3D object. Many applications in design involve repetitive conversions between several representation schemes to efficiently evaluate and operate on solid models. Mapping one representation to other degrades the quality, correctness, and completeness of the information content. In this paper, we quantify the degradation of the proxy representation models by taking inspiration from the hysteresis concept applied in different fields, such as magnetism, mechanics, control systems, cell biology, and economics. We propose a method to compute the error remanence using quantitative measures of information content and quality of proxy models. We also discuss the areas of future research such as sequencing of operations in computational work-flows that would benefit by utilizing the error remanence metric.