[vtk-developers] splitting vtkSurfaceReconstructionFilter into 2 classes

[Arnaud GELAS]

  David,

Thanks for helping on this matter!!! We should definitively push things 
forward.

Regarding the current implementation contained in 
vtkSurfaceReconstructionFilter. It is supposed to be the implementation 
of Hoppe's paper, but I guess you are right, it may be a modified 
version and results may differ with the one described in the paper. 
Comparing both approaches (your code using boost, and this one) would be 
great, and allowing the user to choose between both methods if there are 
any differences in their performance (effectiveness and efficiency).

vtkPointSetNormalEstimationFilter seems to be a better name than 
vtkNormalEstimationFilter.

Regarding vtkSurfaceReconstructionFilter, changing the name is not that 
important at this stage, but I just wanted to point this issue.

Best,
Arnaud

On 08/02/2010 05:53 PM, David Doria wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 4:39 PM, Will Schroeder
> <will.schroeder at kitware.com>  wrote:
>> I totally am with you on this, especially refactoring the class to break out
>> the normal estimation. Renaming the class is problematic though, since Bill
>> L. is still around with his golf clubs and I don't want to be struck with a
>> nine iron :-) But maybe we can wait for winter ;-) or come up with a
>> transition plan across multiple releases.
> Bill, are you really going to hit us with a 9 iron??
>
> I think the most important part of this idea is to expose the normal
> estimation. Renaming the class is, at least to me, a secondary event.
> I know plenty of people who have turned to CGAL because this
> functionality was not available in VTK. As Arnaud said, I implement it
> a while back (a combination of vtkPointSetNormalEstimation and
> vtkPointSetNormalOrientation from here
> http://www.midasjournal.org/browse/publication/708) following Hoppe's
> method exactly. The implementation in vtkSurfaceReconstructionFilter
> seems to be slightly modified, but seems to be much faster and doesn't
> require Boost (for the MST computation), so it seems like a better
> choice.
>
> I volunteer to help Arnaud with cleaning up/documenting/whatever else
> he needs help with to get this VTK ready. Of course we will modify
> vtkSurfaceReconstructionFilter to use the new
> vtkNormalEstimationFilter.
>
> As for the renaming:
> It's kind of long, but a name like
> vtkImplicitFunctionSurfaceReconstructionFilter makes sense. Or maybe
> vtkImplicitFunctionSurfaceFilter? As long as it is noted in a release
> it shouldn't be a big deal, right? People could just do a "find and
> replace" to bring their code up to date.
>
> One more issue - I had named my class
> vtkPointSetNormalEstimationFilter to distinguish that it was not a
> mesh normal estimation filter. Is this necessary? Or is
> vtkNormalEstimationFilter ok?
>
> Thanks,
>
> David