Surface triangulation for polygonal models based on CAD data

This paper presents an approach to the generation of unstructured surface meshes for Computer-Aided Design (CAD) surface models represented as lists of polygons with minimum user interventions. Stereolithography (STL) data are adopted as an interface between a CAD system and the surface grid generator. STL files often include problems such as overlapping surfaces, gaps, and intersections. They have to be revised quickly and automatically before the surface models are used for the background grid of the surface grid generation. In this paper, we describe an automatic revision method for use with STL-defined surface models. The advancing front method using geometric features is adopted directly on the modified STL surfaces. The capability of the method is demonstrated for several 3D surface models. Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.