SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR GENERATING AND MEASURING SURFACE LINES ON MESH SURFACES AND VOLUME OBJECTS AND MESH CUTTING TECHNIQUES ('CURVED MEASUREMENT')

摘要

Systems and methods are presented for generating surface lines on mesh surfaces and voxel objects. In exemplary embodiments of the present invention directed to mesh surfaces, such methods include preprocessing a triangle mesh data structure, constructing a grid data structure for the triangle mesh object, representing a relationship of triangles and vertices, determining boundary edges and vertices, computing a series of surface points, and generating a surface line. In exemplary embodiments of the present invention this technique can be used to cut a mesh surface along the line generated. In exemplary embodiments of the present invention a surface line can be generated from start point A to end point B along an arbitrary curved surface based on the start point and the direction of a vector from the start point to the end point. In such embodiments a point having a small displacement away from the start point can be defined as a reference point, and such reference point can be rotated along an axis defined by the normal of a defined plane to obtain an initial surface point. By repeating the above process using each obtained surface point as a new start point a surface line can be generated from point A to point B on a voxel object's surface. In exemplary embodiments of the present invention such surface lines can be used to perform measurements of volumes of such voxel objects.