Solid model similarity for engineering applications using congruence of triangles

Abstract

This research is an investigation of a solid model retrieval method based on congruence of triangles - Congruent Triangle Similarity (CTS). In the CTS method, three side lengths of each triangle of a query mesh solid model are computed, and the frequency of side length triplets are compared with those of a database model. This comparison is computed as a ratio of number of congruent triangles across pairs of solid models to the total number of triangles. CTS method is evaluated using the Engineering Shape Benchmark with standard information retrieval metrics. Results indicate that (1) retrieval performance shares an inverse-U relationship with resolution of solid models, (2) retrieval performance peaks when number of decimals used is on. It is thus concluded that the CTS method is an effective method of solid model retrieval. The CTS method has an advantage of having good retrieval performance on low fidelity solid model files.