Constant-time neighbor finding in hierarchical tetrahedral meshes

Abstract

Techniques are presented for moving between adjacent tetrahedra in a tetrahedral mesh. The tetrahedra result from a recursive decomposition of a cube into six initial congruent tetrahedra. A new technique is presented for labeling the triangular faces. The labeling enables the implementation of a binary-like decomposition of each tetrahedron which is represented using a pointerless representation. Outlines of algorithms are given for traversing adjacent triangular faces of equal size in constant time.