Part-to-Surface Mesh Segmentation for Mechanical Models Based on Multi-Stage Clustering

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a part-to-surface mesh segmentation method for engineering models characterized by a multi-stage clustering of surface patches generated by the Variational Shape Approximation (VSA) method. Initially, border types between topologically adjacent surface patches are estimated and surface patches bonded by certain border types are grouped into clusters. Secondly, clusters of surface patches are iteratively aggregated into volumetric part-level sub-meshes according to the convexity variations of intermediate sub-meshes. At last, surface patches within their respective part-level sub-meshes are merged into surface-level sub-meshes that are well-fitted by basic primitive shapes based on an improved surface-aware similarity metric. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve better results on mechanical models both quantitatively and perceptually, especially for objects with non-zero genus topology and rich in tiny features.