The winged edge data structure is a data representation used to describe polygon models in computer graphics. It explicitly describes the geometry and topology of faces, edges, and vertices when three or more surfaces come together and meet at a common edge. The ordering is such that the surfaces are ordered counter-clockwise with respect to the innate orientation of the intersection edge. Moreover the representation allows numerically unstable situations like that depicted below.
The winged edge data structure allows for quick traversal between faces, edges, and vertices due to the explicitly linked structure of the network. This rich form of specifying an unstructured grid is in contrast to simpler specifications of polygon meshes such as a node and element list, or the implied connectivity of a regular grid.
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Famous quotes containing the words winged and/or edge:
“What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground,—and to one another; it is either winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It was her stern necessity: all things
Are of one pattern made; bird, beast, and flower,
Deceive us, seeming to be many things,
And are but one. Beheld far off, they differ
As God and devil; bring them to the mind,
They dull its edge with their monotony.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)