IA*: An adjacency-based representation for non-manifold simplicial shapes in arbitrary dimensions

We propose a compact, dimension-independent data structure for manifold, non-manifold and non-regular simplicial complexes, that we call the Generalized Indexed Data structure with Adjacencies (IA∗ data structure). It encodes only top simplices, i.e., the ones that are not on the boundary of any other simplex, plus a suitable subset of the adjacency relations. We describe the IA∗ data structure in arbitrary dimensions, and compare the storage requirements of its two-dimensional and three-dimensional instances with both dimension-specific and dimension-independent representations. We show that the IA∗ data structure is more cost effective than other dimension-independent representations and is even slightly more compact than the existing dimension-specific ones. We present efficient algorithms for navigating a simplicial complex described as an IA∗ data structure. This shows that the IA∗ data structure allows retrieving all topological relations of a given simplex by consi...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: CG
• Authors: David Canino, Leila De Floriani, Kenneth Weiss
• Keywords: ACM CCS, Ccs Computer, CG 2011, Compact Dimension, Computer Graphics