OpenMesh: A Generic and Efficient Polygon Mesh Data Structure

Abstract

We describe the implementation of a half-edge data structure for the static representation and dynamic handling of arbitrary polygonal meshes. The particular design of the data structures and classes aims at maximum flexibility and high performance. We achieve this by using generative programming concepts which allow the compiler to resolve most of the special case handling decisions at compile time. We evaluate our data structure based on prototypic implementations of mesh processing applications such as decimation and smoothing.