Accessing CAD geometry for mesh generation

Proceedings, 12th International Meshing Roundtable, Sandia National Laboratories, pp.33-42, Sept. 2003

MESHING
RESEARCH
CORNER

12th International Meshing Roundtable
September 14-17, 2003
Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.A.

Mark Beall
Simmetrix Inc., Clifton Park, NY., U.S.A. mbeall@simmetrix.com
Joe Walsh
Simmetrix Inc., Clarkesville, GA., U.S.A. jwalshl@simmetrix.com
Mark Shephard
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY., U.S.A. shephard@scorec.rpi.edu

Abstract
One of the major issues of mesh generation today is access to CAD geometry in an accurate and efficient manner. This paperwill provide an overview the process of accessing CAD geometry for mesh generation and will review several of the issuesassociated with accessing CAD geometry for mesh generation. This paper will also evaluate alternative techniques for accessingCAD geometry and review how these techniques address or do not address the issues related to CAD geometry access for meshgeneration. The techniques for CAD geometry access to be reviewed include: Translation & Healing, Discrete Representations,Direct Geometry Access, and Unified Topology Accessing Geometry Directly. The intent of this paper is to provide an overviewto the alternative approaches and how they address the specific issues related to accessing CAD geometry for mesh generation. It is not the intent of this paper to provide detailed algorithms related to accessing or repairing CAD data.

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