Automatic feature-preserving size field for 3D mesh generation

Abstract: This paper presents a methodology aiming at easing considerably the generation of high-quality meshes for complex 3D domains. We show that the whole mesh generation process can be controlled with only five parameters to generate in one stroke quality meshes for arbitrary geometries. The main idea is to build a meshsize field $h(x)$ taking local features of the geometry, such as curvatures, into account. Meshsize information is then propagated from the surfaces into the volume, ensuring that the magnitude of $\vert \nabla h \vert$ is always controlled so as to obtain a smoothly graded mesh. As the meshsize field is stored in an independent octree data structure, the function h can be computed separately, and then plugged in into any mesh generator able to respect a prescribed meshsize field. The whole procedure is automatic, in the sense that minimal interaction with the user is required. Applications examples based on models taken from the very large ABC dataset, are then presented, all treated with the same generic set of parameter values, to demonstrate the efficiency and the universality of the technique.