Automatic construction of watertight manifold triangle meshes from scanned point clouds using matched umbrella facets

ABSTRACTGeneration of watertight manifold triangle meshes from scanned point clouds has emerged as a key task in computer-aided design and inspection. An effective algorithm is presented in this paper, targeting the automatic creation of such triangle meshes from unorganized, scanned data points. The algorithm builds on the initial version of the Umbrella Facet Matching (UFM) algorithm developed by the authors. The mesh generation process starts with Delaunay triangulation of the given point cloud to determine the Delaunay triangle set at each data point. The algorithm then seeks to iteratively generate, in parallel, the local 2-dimensional manifold triangle mesh, resembling the shape of an open umbrella, at each data point from its Delaunay triangle set that fully overlaps with its neighboring umbrellas. Particularly, a four-level inheritance priority queuing mechanism is introduced to enhance the prioritization and ordering of the Delaunay triangles at each data point in order to facilitate the iterativ...