Filling gaps in the boundary of a polyhedron

In this paper we present an algorithm for detecting and repairing defects in the boundary of a polyhedron. These defects, usually caused by problems in CAD software, consist of small gaps bounded by edges that are incident to only one polyhedron face. The algorithm uses a partial curve matching technique for matching parts of the defects, and an optimal triangulation of 3-D polygons for resolving the unmatched parts. It is also shown that finding a consistent set of partial curve matches with maximum score, a subproblem which is related to our repairing process, is NP-hard. Experimental results on several polyhedra are presented.