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Polygon crawling: feature edge extraction from a general polygonal surface for mesh generation

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Abstract

This article describes a method for extracting feature edges of a polygonal surface for mesh generation. This method can extract feature edges from a polygonal surface typically created by a CAD facet generator in which typical feature edge extraction methods fail due to severe nonuniformity and anisotropy. The method is based on the technique called “polygon crawling,” which samples a sequence of points on the polygonal surface by moving a point along the polygonal surface. Extracting appropriate feature edges is important for creating a coarse mesh without yielding self-intersections. Extensive tests have been performed with various CAD-generated facet models, and this technique has shown good performance in extracting feature edges.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Department of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA

    Soji Yamakawa & Kenji Shimada

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  1. Soji Yamakawa
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  2. Kenji Shimada
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Correspondence to Soji Yamakawa.

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Yamakawa, S., Shimada, K. Polygon crawling: feature edge extraction from a general polygonal surface for mesh generation. Engineering with Computers 26, 249–264 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00366-009-0165-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00366-009-0165-y

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