Skip to main content
Log in

A comparison of techniques for geometry access related to mesh generation

  • Original article
  • Published:
Engineering with Computers Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

One of the major issues of mesh generation today is access to geometry in an accurate and efficient manner. This paper will review several of the issues associated with accessing geometry for mesh generation. This paper will also evaluate alternative techniques for accessing geometry and review how these techniques address, or do not address, the issues related to geometry access for mesh generation. The techniques for geometry access to be reviewed include: translation and healing, discrete representations, direct geometry access, and unified topology accessing geometry directly. The intent of this paper is to provide an overview to the alternative approaches and how they address the specific issues related to accessing geometry for mesh generation. It is not the intent of this paper to provide detailed algorithms related to accessing or repairing geometry data.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Braid I (1991) A history of geometric modeling. Spatial Tech-Ex, pp 1.1–1.17

  2. Shephard MS, Georges MK (1992) Reliability of automatic 3-D mesh generation. Comput Methods Appl Mech Eng 101:443–462

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  3. Walsh JL (1993) Exposing the myths of design to analysis data exchange. In: Proceedings of the ABAQUS user’s conference, Aachen, Germany, June 1993, pp 659–672

  4. Butlin G, Stops C (1996) CAD data repair. In: Proceedings of the 5th international meshing roundtable, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 1996, pp 7–12

  5. Shephard MS, Beall MW, O’Bara RM (1998) Revisiting the elimination of the adverse effects of small model features in automatically generated meshes. In: Proceedings of the 7th international meshing roundtable, Dearborn, Michigan, October 1998. Sandia National Laboratories report SAND 98-2250, pp 119–131

  6. Dey S, Shephard MS, Georges MK (1997) Elimination of the adverse effects of small model features by local modifications of automatically generated meshes. Eng Comput 13(3):134–152

    Google Scholar 

  7. Mezentsev AA, Woehler T (1999) Methods and algorithms of automated CAD repair for incremental surface meshing. In: Proceedings of the 8th international meshing roundtable, South Lake Tahoe, California, October 1999. Sandia National Laboratories report SAND 99-2288, pp 299–309

  8. Ribo R, Bugeda G, Onate E (2002) Some algorithms to correct a geometry in order to create a finite element mesh. Comput Structures 80:1399–1408

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  9. Luo X, Shephard MS, Remacle J-F, O’Bara RM, Beall MW, Szabó BA, Actis R (2002) p-version mesh generation issues. In: Proceeding of the 11th international meshing roundtable, Ithaca, New York, September 2002. Sandia National Laboratories, pp 343–354

  10. Dey S, O’Bara RM, Shephard MS (2001) Curvilinear mesh generation in 3D. Comput Aided Des 33:199–209

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Li X, Shephard MS, Beall MW (2003) Accounting for curved domains in mesh adaptation. Int J Numerical Methods Eng 58(2):247–276

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  12. Pandofi A, Ortiz M (2002) An efficient procedure for fragmentation simulations. Eng Comput 18(2):148–159

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Wan J, Kocak S, Shephard MS, Mika D (2003) Automated adaptive forming simulations. In: Proceedings of the 12th international meshing roundtable, Santa Fe, New Mexico, September 2003

  14. Krysl P, Ortiz M (2001) Extraction of boundary representation from surface triangulations. Int J Numerical Methods Eng 50:1737–1758

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  15. Lee CK (2003) Automatic metric 3-D surface mesh generation using subdivision surface geometry model. Part 1: construction of underlying geometric model. Int J Numerical Methods Eng 56:1593–1614

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  16. Cirak F, Ortiz M, Schroder (2000) Subdivision surfaces: a new paradigm for thin shell finite-element analysis. Int J Numerical Methods Eng 47:2039–2072

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  17. Owen SJ, White DR (2001) Mesh-based geometry: a systematic approach to constructing geometry from a finite element mesh. In: Proceedings of the 10th international meshing roundtable, Newport Beach, California, October 2001. Sandia National Laboratories report SAND 2001-2967C, pp 83–96

  18. Owen SJ, White DR, Tautges TJ (2002) Facet-based surfaces for 3-D mesh generation. In: Proceedings of the 11th international meshing roundtable, Ithaca, New York, September 2002, pp 297–311

  19. Walsh JL (1991) Geometrically associative analysis modeling. Spat Tech-Ex, pp 9.1–9.16

  20. Merazzi S, Gerteisen EA, Mezentsev A (2000) A generic CAD–mesh Interface. In: Proceedings of the 9th international meshing roundtable, New Orleans, Louisiana, October 2000. Sandia National Laboratories report SAND 2000-2207, pp 361–369

  21. Tautges TJ (2000) The common geometry module (CGM): a generic, extensible geometry interface. In: Proceedings of the 9th international meshing roundtable, New Orleans, Louisiana, October 2000. Sandia National Laboratories report SAND 2000-2207, pp 337–359

  22. Shephard MS (2000) Meshing environment for geometry-based analysis. Int J Numerical Methods Eng 47(1–3):169–190

    Google Scholar 

  23. Weiler KJ (1988) The radial edge structure: a topological representation for non-manifold geometric boundary representations. In: Wozny MJ, McLaughlin HW, Encarnacao JL (eds) Geometric modeling for CAD applications. North Holland, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, pp 3–36

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mark W. Beall.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Beall, M.W., Walsh, J. & Shephard, M.S. A comparison of techniques for geometry access related to mesh generation. Engineering with Computers 20, 210–221 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00366-004-0289-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00366-004-0289-z

Keywords

Navigation