Susan A Meshkat

US Patent:

55530095, Sep 3, 1996

Filed:

Nov 1, 1995

Appl. No.:

8/551440

Inventors:

Siavash N. Meshkat - San Jose CA
Susan A. Meshkat - San Jose CA

Assignee:

International Business Machines Corporation - Armonk NY

International Classification:

G06F 1700

US Classification:

364578

Abstract:

A method and system are provided for subdividing an arbitrarily shaped object into a collection of geometric elements ("cells") having predefined, simple topologies which facilitate further subdivision into tetrahedra, and which are well suited for further applications, such as finite element calculations. Initially, a representation of the object includes one or more regions, at least one of the regions not meeting the definition of "cell", each region having vertices, edges, and faces. An edge is selected according to a priority scheme, and slices which run through the edge and which also either run through other edges or vertices of the representation, are coplanar with other faces of the representation, or have other predetermined attributes, are considered for use in subdividing the representation. A score, which was initially calculated for the representation, is recalculated for hypothetical subdivisions of the representation incorporating each respective one of such slices. The scores are related to predetermined factors, such as the number of regions which are cells, relative to the total number of regions, the number of faces whose topologies correspond with the topologies of faces of cells, relative to the total number of faces, and factors relating to the shapes of the regions and faces.