Height Map Viewer Tool not only for the Laser Engraved Sample Exploration

摘要

The paper describes a complex software tool designed for exploring height maps. The tool facilitates tasks like viewing the height maps in 2D and 3D perspectives, measuring their dimensions, computing various statistics for them and, most importantly, mutually comparing several of them for similarity. The tool originates from a research in the area of modeling and simulation of the laser engraving process and is used for exploring surface laser engravings digitized by a confocal microscope. It may, however, be used with any general height maps described in the input format, which is designed to be easy to create and human readable. The main aim of this paper is to introduce the useful tool to the experts.