Straight skeletons and mitered offsets of nonconvex polytopes (Q331386)

In this paper the authors present the mitered offset surfaces of non-convex polytopes in \(\mathbb R^3\) (basic definitions, proof of existence and geometric, topological and algorithmic properties) and link them to 3D straight skeletons. The article commences with an introduction of the state of the art and an overview of the major difficulties such as finding an appropriate generalisation of a straight skeleton in three dimensions or a precise definition of the shrinking process in 3D. Next, the authors present an overview on a convex polytope, with details on the possible types of vertices and edges. This is followed by a characterisation of valid offset surfaces for which the existence and basic properties are also discussed. The next sections focus on the two-dimensional reductions for pointed and arbitrary vertices (Section 4), on the construction of 3D straight skeletons for general, non-convex polytopes (Section 5) and on the classification of events for mitered offsets and straight skeletons (Section 6). The paper concludes with a characterisation of roof complexes in Section 7 (the straight skeleton of a polytope on a plane), a discussion of weighted polygons and weighted mitered offset surfaces (Section 8) and a generalisation for higher dimensions (Section 9).