Tetrahedral Mesh Editing with Local Feature Manipulations

Volumetric mesh models are widely used nowadays in areas like product quality evaluation, physically-based deformation, numerical simulation, and so on. In the application of Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) integration, providing a method to directly manipulate mesh models can reduce much effort in the simulation process. However, this integration is limited or only provided from CAD to CAE at current time. In this paper, we propose a framework for volumetric mesh editing based on feature dimensions. In our framework, the volumetric mesh is first decomposed into volumetric features based on corresponding surface features. Then, random-walk based interpolation algorithm is applied to manipulation of local features. Our framework allows users to change the dimensions of the recognized features on the volumetric mesh directly. Then optimization, which is limited to local features, is employed to refine the tetrahedrons of the volumetric features once the quality of the elements does not meet the requirements. Experimental results show that the features hold precisely after the editing operations. Additionally, the quality of the elements keeps well after the tetrahedral mesh has been edited.