System and method for lightweight polygonal topology representation
AssigneeSiemens Product Lifecycle Management Software Inc.
InventorsMichael B. Carter, Andreas Johannsen, Michael C. McCarty, Jeremy S. Bennett, Bo Xu
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Abstract
A system, method, and computer program for storing a polygonal topology, comprising representing a primitive with a plurality of vertices, internal half-edges and external half-edges; and storing said plurality of vertices in a vertex array and said plurality of external half-edges in a half-edge array, wherein said arrays are indexed and parallel to one another; whereby said primitive is re-created from said parallel array with said internal half-edges that are implicit from a primitive structure and appropriate means and computer-readable instructions.
Claims8
A method for storing a polygonal topology, comprising:
- representing a primitive in a computing device with a plurality of vertices, internal half-edges and external half-edges;
- and
- storing, in the computing device, said plurality of vertices in a vertex array and said plurality of external half-edges in a half-edge array, wherein said arrays are indexed and parallel to one another, without storing any of the internal half-edges,
- whereby said primitive is re-created from said parallel array with said internal half-edges that are implicit from a primitive structure.
A method for using a stored polygonal topology, comprising:
- obtaining, by a computing device, a first array that is indexed with and parallel to a second array;
- extracting, by the computing device, a plurality of unique vertex data and a plurality of external half-edge data from said indexed arrays, without extracting internal half-edge data;
- and
- creating a primitive from said plurality of unique vertex data and plurality of external half-edge data by the computing device.
A tangible machine readable medium encoded with instructions that, when executed, cause a computer to:
- represent a primitive with a plurality of vertices, internal half-edges and external half-edges;
- and
- store said plurality of vertices and said plurality of external half-edges in a parallel array without storing any of the internal half-edges;
- whereby said primitive is re-created from said parallel array with said internal half-edges that are implicit from a primitive structure.
A data processing system comprising:
- a processor;
- and
- an accessible memory;
- the data processing system configured to implement a method for storing a polygonal topology by performing the steps of
- representing a primitive with a plurality of vertices, internal half-edges and external half-edges;
- storing said plurality of vertices and said plurality of external half-edges in a parallel array, without storing any of the internal half-edges.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.