Douglas T Maxwell

US Patent:

7463258, Dec 9, 2008

Filed:

Jul 15, 2005

Appl. No.:

11/185084

Inventors:

Todd P. Drury - Portsmouth RI, US
Douglas B. Maxwell - Woodworth LA, US
Richard R. Shell - Riverside RI, US

Assignee:

The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Navy - Washington DC

International Classification:

G06T 15/30

US Classification:

345423, 345419, 345420, 707102

Abstract:

Disclosed is a method for extracting and rendering data from digital charting databases. The software method integrates and combines bathymetric/topographic data from several sources into a stream of three-dimensional data points, creating a triangle surface mesh, and dividing it into pieces along arbitrary lines to create regularly sized and shaped areas for efficient storing and rendering. The method works by forming an initial triangle mesh of the area and then refining the mesh by incrementally adding each point to the mesh, until a full mesh representation is achieved. The large single file is then broken down into discrete geographic regions, and the region data is converted into a standard file format for viewing and/or processing.