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Computer-Aided Design
Volume 39, Issue 9, September 2007, Pages 794-817
 
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doi:10.1016/j.cad.2007.03.008    
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Copyright © 2007 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.

A divide and conquer algorithm for medial surface calculation of planar polyhedra

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Ian Strouda, Corresponding Author Contact Information, E-mail The Corresponding Author, Gábor Rennerb and Paul Xirouchakisa

aEcole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, DGM-ICAP-LICP, ME-Ecublens, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

bComputer and Automation Research Institute (SZTAKI), Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Kende utca 13-17, H-1111 Budapest XI, Hungary


Received 9 December 2005; 
accepted 27 March 2007. 
Available online 13 April 2007.

Abstract

The Medial Axis Transform surface, (or MAT or MS) is proving to be a useful tool for several applications and geometric reasoning tasks. However, calculation of the MAT is a time-consuming task and the benefits of the mathematical-based tool are offset by the cost of the calculation. This paper presents a method for medial surface calculation which uses subdivision to simplify the problem and hence speed up the calculation, a so-called ‘divide-and-conquer’ approach. The basis for this is a modification of the dual structure of the original object. As the calculation proceeds this structure is broken up into sub-pieces each representing a simpler sub-part of the MAT. Perhaps more importantly, this method creates a correct node decomposition of the dual structure. The paper goes on to demonstrate some applications of the results for geometric tasks, specifically offsetting and model subdivision, which are normally expensive but are simpler based on the MAT calculation results.

Keywords: Medial axis transform; MAT

Article Outline

1. Introduction
2. Terminology
2.1. Topological dual
2.2. Modified dual
2.3. Delaunay node
2.4. MAT dual
2.5. Convex/concave edge
2.6. Convex/concave vertex
2.7. Boundary Representation data structure
2.8. Positive/negative MAT
3. MAT calculation
3.1. Creating the modified dual
3.2. Determining and extracting Delaunay nodes
4. MAT calculation examples
4.1. Object with holes
4.2. Wiggly object and MAT
4.3. Bracket and MAT
4.4. Stand and MAT
4.5. Prismatic objects
5. Offsetting and body recreation
5.1. Offsetting results
5.2. Conclusions
Acknowledgements
Appendix. Creating dual objects
References








































Corresponding Author Contact InformationCorresponding author. Tel.: +41 21 693 2949; fax: +41 21 693 3553.

Computer-Aided Design
Volume 39, Issue 9, September 2007, Pages 794-817
 
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