A cellular topology-based approach to generating progressive solid models from feature-centric models

Progressive mesh representation and generation have become one of the most important issues in network-based computer graphics. However, current researches are mostly focused on triangular mesh models. On the other hand, solid models are widely used in industry and are applied to advanced applications such as product design and virtual assembly. Moreover, as the demand to share and transmit these solid models over the network is emerging, how to effectively stream the solid models has been considered as one of the major research issues. In this paper, we present a cellular topology-based approach to generating progressive solid models (PSM) from feature-based models. The proposed approach introduces a new scheme for storing and transmitting solid models over the network. The cellular topology (CT) approach makes it possible to effectively generate PSMs and to efficiently transmit the models over the network with compact model size. Thus, an arbitrary solid model SM designed by a set of design features is stored as a much coarser solid model SM 0 together with a sequence of n detail records that indicate how to incrementally refine SM 0 exactly back into the original solid model SM=SM n .