Tetrahedral meshing in the wild

Yixin Hu, Qingnan Zhou, Xifeng Gao, Alec Jacobson, Denis Zorin, Daniele Panozzo

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We propose a novel tetrahedral meshing technique that is unconditionally robust, requires no user interaction, and can directly convert a triangle soup into an analysis-ready volumetric mesh. The approach is based on several core principles: (1) initial mesh construction based on a fully robust, yet efficient, filtered exact computation (2) explicit (automatic or user-defined) tolerancing of the mesh relative to the surface input (3) iterative mesh improvement with guarantees, at every step, of the output validity. The quality of the resulting mesh is a direct function of the target mesh size and allowed tolerance: Increasing allowed deviation from the initial mesh and decreasing the target edge length both lead to higher mesh quality. Our approach enables "black-box" analysis, i.e. it allows to automatically solve partial differential equations on geometrical models available in the wild, offering a robustness and reliability comparable to, e.g., image processing algorithms, opening the door to automatic, large scale processing of real-world geometric data.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article numberA21
JournalACM Transactions on Graphics
Volume37
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2018

Keywords

  • Mesh Generation
  • Robust Geometry Processing
  • Tetrahedral Meshing

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design

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