Background

To get a smooth surface ProTOp engages four different tools. All of these tools operate exclusively on the active surface patch, defined by various selection options.

█ Active surface patch selection

In order to select the active surface, one has to choose between two options:

• Cut surfaces - this option selects all triangles that were created by cutting material of the free region.
• Cut edges - this option selects all edges that were created by cutting material of the free region.

For any of the above options, the selected region can be expanded by some desired bandwidth. The bandwidth number specifies the number of triangle layers surrounding the originally selected surface patch. Additionally, the triangles of fixed material regions can be excluded from the selection.

The figures below illustrate a few situations; the selected surface is colored light blue.

Figure. Selection options: cut surfaces; bandwidth = 0; fixed not excluded.

Figure. Selection options: cut surfaces; bandwidth = 2; fixed not excluded.

Figure. Selection options: cut surfaces; bandwidth = 2; fixed excluded.

Figure. Selection options: cut edges; bandwidth = 0; fixed not excluded.

Figure. Selection options: cut edges; bandwidth = 2; fixed excluded.

█ Available smoothing tools

The following smoothing tools are available.

• Peaks and pits removal tool is intended to remove exposed peaks and pits. Typically this tool should be run in front of all other smoothing tools.
• Triangles refinement tool refines the triangulated surface mesh by triangle subdivision, based on priority in dependence of the local curvature information.
• Smooth surface tool minimizes variations of triangle normals.
• Simplify surface tool reduces the number of triangles by removing the most deteriorated triangles.

Each of these tools is associated with its intensity parameter. Typically, the intensity of these tools should be increased gradually from low (initial tool runs) to higher values (final tool runs).