Vlist and Ering: compact data structures for simplicial 2-complexes

Abstract

Various data structures have been proposed for representing the connectivity of manifold triangle meshes. For example, the Extended Corner Table (ECT) stores V+6T references, where V and T respectively denote the vertex and triangle counts. ECT supports Random Access and Traversal (RAT) operators at Constant Amortized Time (CAT) cost. We propose two novel variations of ECT that also support RAT operations at CAT cost, but can be used to represent and process Simplicial 2-Complexes (S2Cs), which may represent star-connecting, non-orientable, and non-manifold triangulations along with dangling edges, which we call sticks. Vlist stores V+3T+3S+3(C+S-N) references, where S denotes the stick count, C denotes the number of edge-connected components and N denotes the number of star-connecting vertices. Ering stores 6T+3S+3(C+S-N) references, but has two advantages over Vlist: the Ering implementation of the operators is faster and is purely topological (i.e., it does not perform geometric queries). Vlist and Ering representations have two principal advantages over previously proposed representations for simplicial complexes: (1) Lower storage cost, at least for meshes with significantly more triangles than sticks, and (2) explicit support of side-respecting traversal operators which each walks from a corner on the face of a triangle t across an edge or a vertex of t, to a corner on a faces of a triangle or to an end of a stick that share a vertex with t, and this without ever piercing through the surface of a triangle.