A Generic Implementation of dD Combinatorial Maps in CGAL

Abstract: We present a generic implementation of dD combinatorial maps and linear cell complexes in Cgal, the Computational Geometry Algorithms Library. A combinatorial map describes an object subdivided into cells; a linear cell complex describes the linear geometry embedding of such a subdivision. In this paper, we show how generic programming and new techniques recently introduced in the C++11 standard allow a fully generic and customizable implementation of these two data structures, while maintaining optimal memory footprint and direct access to all information. We compare our implementation with existing 2D and 3D libraries implementing cellular structures, and illustrate its usage by two applications. To the best of our knowledge, the Cgal software package presented here offers the only available generic implementation of combinatorial maps in any dimension.

Keywords: Combinatorial map; Linear cell complex; Cgal; Generic programming; C++11.