An illustration technique for unstructured 3-D meshes

Abstract

Geometric relations in an irregular 3-D polyhedron or tetrahedral mesh are often difficult to comprehend, even for relatively few vertices. A technique for illustrating such meshes which aids this comprehension is described in terms of several independent components, i.e. edge representation, viewpoint and perspective projection, and lighting. These images are suitable for embedding in dynamic displays, or in publications.

Heuristics for the effective use of these components are discussed and the technique is demonstrated on three small configurations from the recent literature.