DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claim 9 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter.
The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because
Claim 9 is directed to a computer-readable storage medium and this is not statutory because applicant doesn’t exclude transitory embodiment of computer readable storage medium. Computer-readable storage medium comprises both transitory and non-transitory computer-readable storage medium. Applicant’s specification doesn’t define computer readable storage medium to include only transitory embodiment.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 1 recites, “A free-form curved surface slicing method based on an implicit model, comprising: step 1, determining an implicit model and a layered curved surface of a part to be manufactured, the implicit model is a distance field or a temperature field;”
The underlined phrase “ an implicit model”. There is a phrase “ an implicit model” before the underlined “an implicit model”. The scope of underlined “an implicit model” is not clear because the underlined “an implicit model” may mean a new implicit model which is different than first “an implicit model” in the preamble.
Claim 1 recites, “step 3, comparing rules for intersecting the contour lines and meshes within the mesh,” the phrase “meshes within the mesh” is not untestable. How there meshes with a mesh?
Claim 1 recites, mesh coordinates are substituted into the implicit model, then an intersection of the contour lines and the mesh is compared based on an obtained relationship between mesh vertices and a model, thereby obtaining a position of an intersection point of the contour lines in the corresponding mesh;” The scope of the phrase “a model” is not clear as there are multiple “ a model” is the claim. The phrase “ the corresponding mesh”: has lack of antecedent basis. So the scope of “ the corresponding mesh” is not clear.
Claim 1 recites, “step 4, based on the mesh coordinates and values of the mesh coordinates calculated in the implicit model, The scope of the phrase “the mesh coordinates and values of the mesh coordinates”. Mesh coordinates and the value of mesh coordinates are same. As they are same, the intension of “the mesh coordinates and values of the mesh coordinates” is not clear.
Claim 1 recites, “wherein direction attributes are assigned to the corresponding discrete line segments when storing the intersection points of the discrete line segments in the mesh;”. There is a lack of antecedent basis for the term “the corresponding discrete line segments’.
Claim 1 recites, “step 5, merging unordered point sets obtained in step 4 to establish a topological relationship between the point sets and the discrete line segments,” Step 4 provides intersection points but doesn’t provide “point sets.”
Claim 1 recites. “after traversing all the points, a complete and ordered profile is connected, thus obtaining a sliced profile”. The scope is the limitation is not clear. The limitation indicates, a complete and ordered profile How it is sliced profile?
Claims 9 and 10 are also rejected under 35 USC 112(b) for the reason shown above for claim 1 as claims 9/10 and claim 1 have the same limitations.
Claims 2-8 are also rejected by virtue of dependency.
Claim 3 recites, “wherein the layered curved surfaces comprise UV curved surfaces, STL file curved surfaces, and curved surface formulas.’ Formulas are not surfaces. The phrase may have been “formula curved surfaces”.
Claim 4 recites, “ wherein the implicit model is the distance field, the distance field utilizes a model surface as a distance field boundary, and the shortest distance between any point in a space and a model boundary is defined as a value of the point in the distance field;” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the phrase “the shortest distance between any point in a space and a model boundary”.
Claim 5 recites, “wherein if the layered curved surface is a formula curved surface, it is necessary to perform division according to a length direction and a width direction of the curved surface, when the line segments are intersected with each other, a quadrilateral mesh is divided.” The phrase “necessary” is vague and its scope can’t be determined.
Claim 6 recites, “ wherein if the input layered curved surface is a curved surface formula,” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the term “the input layered curved surface”. So its scope is not clear.
Claim 6 recites, “it is necessary to enter a mesh size to be divided; “ The phrase “necessary” is vague and its scope can’t be determined.
Claim 6 recites, “the mesh is obtained through intersection, each of the meshes is marked with an ID number, and coordinates of subsequent mesh vertices are calculated in real time based on the ID number.” Claim 1 start with a mesh. How there are many meshes as the limitation indicates each of the meshes.
Claim 7 recites, “wherein a direction attribute is assigned to the calculated point set and the corresponding line segment, that is, it is specified that a direction of the line segment always satisfies a counterclockwise direction surrounding internal vertices.” There are lack of antecedent basis for the terms “to the calculated point set and the corresponding line segment,”. Therefore the scope of the limitation is no not clear.
Claim 8 recites. “wherein if the layered curved surface is the curved surface formula, the mesh vertex coordinates are calculated based on the ID number and the mesh size, if the layered curved surface is the UV curved surface or the STL file, the mesh vertex coordinates in the file are directly read and the mesh vertex coordinates are substituted in the implicit model to get a corresponding value”. Claim 8 depends on claim 1 and the bolded phrases have lack of antecedent basis. Therefore the scope of the limitation is not clear.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-10 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action.
Claim 1 is allowable because Behandish et al. ( US 20200209834, “Behandish”) teaches, A free-form curved surface slicing method based on an implicit model, comprising:
step 1, determining an implicit model and a layered curved surface of a part to be manufactured, , (“[0022] The present disclosure relates to additive manufacturing (AM). Additive manufacturing has lifted many of the limitations associated with traditional fabrication. Additive manufactured parts may include complex geometric and topological structures and multi-material microstructures to achieve improved performance such as high stiffness per weight, high surface area per volume for heat transfer, and so on. the implicit model is a distance field or a temperature field;” and “[0031] The indicator function of a shape is a field in its underlying space that maps every point in that space to a binary value; namely, 0 if the point is outside and 1 if the point is inside the shape. It can be viewed as an implicit model of the shape that characterizes point membership queries about that shape.”)
Jia (US Patent Publication: 20240045400) teaches, the implicit model is a distance field or a temperature field; [0006] As an example, some embodiments include a model optimization method for additive manufacturing, comprising: acquiring an explicit model of a concept design for additive manufacturing, and converting the explicit model to an implicit model; the implicit model being represented by a signed distance field formed by the shortest distance from each voxel in a working space to a boundary point of the concept design; determining an unfeasible geometric feature for current additive manufacturing and a detection threshold corresponding thereto; subjecting the implicit model to unfeasible geometric feature detection and iterative processing for correction and optimization based on the detection threshold of the determined unfeasible geometric feature, to obtain an optimized implicit model; and converting the optimized implicit model to an explicit model, thus obtaining an optimized explicit model.”)
Jiang et al. ( CN 106903880) teaches, step 2, using a mesh model of the layered curved surface to intersect with the implicit model of the part to be manufactured to obtain contour lines; ( “The purpose of layering and slicing the complex three-dimensional model into simple two-dimensional plies, the three-dimensional geometric model in the computer represented by the outline through processing of the slice. contour line represents the boundary of the layering and slicing, connect the closed loop composed of the intersection space in the STL file model by layered planes, and two plies of each layer and is formed by a profile of one of the shape inter-section. STL slicing algorithm used is as follows: through the position relationship between analysis tangent plane and the triangular grid, if the cutting plane intersects with the triangle mesh intersection space. after calculating the tangent plane with the STL grid model all the intersection space, all the intersection space of the stratified plane orderly connected so as to obtain the layered slicing surface of the contour line, contour line is obtained through this method,”)
No prior art is available for step 3, step4 and step5.
Claim 9 is directed to a computer readable storage medium having the similar limitations of claim 1. So claim 9 has no prior art rejection similar to claim 1.
Claim 10 is directed to system having the similar limitations of claim 1. . So claim 10 has no prior art rejection similar to claim 1.
Claims 2-8 doesn’t have prior art rejection due to dependency.
Conclusion
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/TAPAS MAZUMDER/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2615