Iterative edge length interval constraining in triangular meshes based on local parametrization

Abstract

Meshes with constraints in the edge length are useful for several applications, spe-cially for chemical and physical simulations. This work presents an iterative method for remeshing an arbitrary triangular 2-manifold mesh into a mesh with all edge lengths within an user-defined constraining interval. The method uses stellar operations to adjust the amount of vertices and triangles in the model and for improving the valence of the vertices. It also applies the Laplacian operator in a local parametric space to improve the distribution of the vertices over the surface. We propose a nonlinear optimization, locally applied, for cases in which the mesh is almost regular. Geometric losses are prevented by performing a projection over the original surface. Our method results in a nearly regu-lar mesh, with vertices uniformly distributed over the surface. The dual of the mesh is used in simulations of carbon nanostructures as an application of the method. The main contribution of this work is a new approach for constraining the edge length within an explicitly given interval. Our method also ensures lower global geometry losses and lower memory cost in comparison to methods available in the literature.