Automated Block Decomposition of Solid Models Based on Sheet Operations

High quality hex mesh can be effectively generated based on the block structure of a solid model, but the existing approaches to block decomposition of the solid model are still far from the expectation. In this paper, we propose a new method of decomposing the solid model into the block structure based on sheet operations, which can guarantee the validity of the resultant block structure. The method firstly generates an initial hex mesh of the given solid model based on its tet mesh. Then, it inserts a number of global sheets on the boundary and inside the volume respectively by sheet inflation to make the hex mesh capture the geometry of the solid model. Finally our method determines the optimal sheet set that can be extracted based on quality prediction and extracts the sheet set as a whole to get the reasonable and valid block structure of the solid model. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.