Geometric ambiguities in boundary representations (Q1109503)

Boundary representations are usually separated into two components, a topological component and a geometric component. The conditions necessary to ensure that the topological component is unambiguous are well understood. However, in algebraic modelling systems (as opposed to polyhedral modelling systems), an unambiguous topological structure can have noncongruent geometric interpretations with identical vertex coordinates, face equations and edge descriptions using the usual representation of edges as the intersection of adjacent faces. This means that a naive conversion of a constructive solid geometry tree that unambiguously describes a solid may well lead to ambiguous boundary representations unless additional information is retained in the boundary representation. This paper examines the source of these ambiguities.