Identification of similar and complementary subparts in B-rep mechanical models

Content-based retrieval is particularly important for exploiting CAD model databases and online catalogues. To allow the identification of reusable part models possibly fitting with the product under development, methods for the similarity assessment between shapes should be provided both in terms of global and partial shape matching. In this perspective, this paper proposes a method directly working on CAD B-rep models for 3D model retrieval, which does not require any model conversion to triangular meshes and in addition to global and partial matching allows the identification of components that may likely be assembled with a given model.