Hash function for geometry reconstruction in rapid prototyping

Abstract

There are many applications where data structures use a hash function. The hash data structures are widely used across all fields of computer science. Nevertheless the design or selection of hash function for data sets with unknown properties is a problem. The Rapid Prototyping uses STL format, where a set of triangles is used to represent a surface of the object. It is necessary to construct the regular triangular mesh from the STL data format for many applications. It is a lengthy process for large data sets as the time complexity of this process is O(N2) or O(NlgN), where N is a number of triangles. The hash table can be used to speed up the process but the speed strongly depends on hash function properties. This paper describes a new hash function and presents properties obtained on large data sets.