Analysis and verification of the boundary surfaces of solid objects (Q1383348)

The author describes the steps that make up a procedure for analyzing the topology (and geometry) of a three-dimensional object that is given as a discretized, triangulated model. The author presents a bottom-up procedure for topology analysis: starting with the set of individual nodes and the individual triangular facets defined by those nodes, more complex ``structures'' are built -- set of connected triangles defining particular surfaces/surface regions. Any given surface might contain inconsistencies such as ``intersections'', ``self-intersections'', ``touching element'', etc. The author describes the required geometrical test that helps identify such problems. Building the topology model is accelerated by using a ``background mesh'' -- which is used to limit neighbor searches to a more localized region in space.