Generalizing feature preservation in iso-surface extraction from triple dexel models

Abstract

We present a method to resolve visual artifacts of a state-of-the-art iso-surface extraction algorithm by generating feature-preserving surface patches for isolated arbitrarily complex, single voxels without the need for further adaptive subdivision. In the literature, iso-surface extraction from a 3D voxel grid is limited to a single sharp feature per minimal unit, even for algorithms such as Cubical Marching Squares that produce feature-preserving surface reconstructions. In practice though, multiple sharp features can meet in a single voxel. This is reflected in the triple dexel model, which is used in simulation of CNC manufacturing processes. Our approach generalizes the use of normal information to perfectly preserve multiple sharp features for a single voxel, thus avoiding visual artifacts caused by state-of-the-art procedures.