Speeding up rapid prototyping by offset

Rapid prototyping methods, like stereolithography, have gained wide industrial acceptance in recent years. The main advantage of rapid prototyping over conventional methods is faster speed. Unlike material removal from a stock (as in machining), most rapid prototyping methods have to build the solid volume layer by layer. The tracing of the cross-sectional solid area in each layer is the most time consuming process. The paper proposes to use solid offset to cut down the solid volume to be built. Faster speed can thus be achieved by tracing less solid. The background theory for obtaining the reduced-volume solid is explained in the paper. The approach is applicable to solids defined by constructive solid geometry (CSG).