All-Hex Mesh Generation via Volumetric PolyCube Deformation

While hexahedral mesh elements are preferred by a variety of simulation techniques, constructing quality all-hex meshes of general shapes remains a challenge. An attractive hex-meshing approach, often referred to as submapping, uses a low distortion mapping between the input model and a PolyCube (a solid formed from a union of cubes), to transfer a regular hex grid from the PolyCube to the input model. Unfortunately, the construction of suitable PolyCubes and corresponding volumetric maps for arbitrary shapes remains an open problem. Our work introduces a new method for computing low-distortion volumetric PolyCube deformations of general shapes and for subsequent all-hex remeshing. For a given input model, our method simultaneously generates an appropriate PolyCube structure and mapping between the input model and the PolyCube. From these we automatically generate good quality all-hex meshes of complex natural and man-made shapes.