Volumetric Decomposition via Medial Object and Pen-Based User Interface for Hexahedral Mesh Generation

This paper describes an approach that combines the volumetric decomposition suggestions and a pen-based user interface (UI) to assist in the geometry decomposition process for hexahedral mesh generation. To generate the suggestions for decomposition, a 3D medial object (MO) is first used to recognize and group sweepable regions. Second, each sweepable region of the original model is visualized using different colors. Third, the ideal cutting regions to create cutting surfaces are highlighted. Based on the visual suggestions, users then create cutting surfaces with the pen-based UI. The models are then decomposed into sweepable sub-volumes following the MO based suggestions. The pen-based UI offers three types of tools to create cutting surfaces: (1) Freeform based tool, (2) B-REP based tool, and (3) MO based tool. The pen-based UI also selects a suitable type of tool automatically based on users input. The proposed approach has been tested on industrial CAD models and hex meshing results are presented.