Surface feature based mesh segmentation

Mesh segmentation has a variety of applications in product design, reverse engineering, and rapid prototyping fields. This paper presents a novel algorithm of mesh segmentation from original scanning data points, which essentially consists of three steps. Normal based initial decomposing is first performed to recognize plane features. Then we implement further segmentation based on curvature criteria and Gauss mapping, followed by the detection of quadric surface features. The segmentation refinement is finally achieved using B-spline surface fitting technology. The experimental results on many 3D models have demonstrated the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed segmentation method. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.