Composite freeform surface reconstruction using recursive interpolating subdivision scheme

Composite freeform surface reconstruction from 3D scanned data of a physical model has become a more and more important topic in the field of CAD/CAE/CAM. By repeated application of a fixed set of recursive interpolation subdivision schemes on the initial mesh of the 3D sparse scanned data of a physical model, a polygonal model of composite freeform surface can be constructed. In the paper, the algorithm for constructing the initial triangular mesh from 3D sparse scanned data is presented. The unified recursive interpolating subdivision scheme for triangular mesh is proposed. A special quad-tree data structure is suggested to store all the necessary information of the vertices and elements of the polygonal model. Examples of composite surface reconstruction are provided to explain the distinguished superiority of subdivision scheme for reconstructing the arbitrary topological complex surface.