An automated surface mesh generation based on the 3-D looping algorithm

Abstract

This paper discusses an extension of the looping algorithm for 3-D triangular or quadrilateral surface mesh generation. The triangulation of the model surface is input by the neutral STL file, and the topology of triangular facets is established. The triangular facets are grouped based on the angles of adjacent facets, and each group forms a feature region. The common boundary of the adjacent feature regions constitutes a feature curve. The nodes are generated on each feature curve based on the mesh density distribution. The boundary of each feature region is represented by the nodes list. For each feature region, an appropriate splitting plane is chose to split it into two sub-regions, the spatial shape of the splitting line is calculated and the nodes are generated on it. The nodes list is determined for each sub-region and each sub-region is recursively subdivided until all sub-regions are not reducible. After mesh generation on each region, the smoothing of the nodes is performed. The proposal algorithm is reliable and efficient for surface mesh generation with high quality. The examples of surface mesh generation are also given to demonstrate the feasibility of the algorithm.