COLUMN TESSELLATIONS

A new class of non facet-to-facet random tessellations in three-dimensional space is introduced -- the so-called column tessellations. The spatial construction is based on a stationary planar tessellation; each cell of the spatial tessellation is a prism whose base facet is congruent to a cell of the planar tessellation. Thus intensities, topological and metric mean values of the spatial tessellation can be calculated from suitably chosen parameters of the planar tessellation.

TERRAIN DECOMPOSITION AND LAYERED MANUFACTURING

We consider a problem that arises in generating three-dimensional models by methods of layered manufacturing: How does one decompose a given model P into a small number of sub-models each of which is a terrain polyhedron? Terrain polyhedra have a base facet such that, for each point of the polyhedron, the line segment joining the point to its orthogonal projection on the base facet lies within the polyhedron. Terrain polyhedra are exactly the class of polyhedral models for which it is possible to construct the model using layered manufacturing (with layers parallel to the base facet), without the need for constructing "supports" (which must later be removed). In order to maximize the integrity of a prototype, one wants to minimize the number of individual sub-models that are manufactured and then glued together. We show that it is NP-hard to decide if a three-dimensional model P of genus 0 can be decomposed into k terrain polyhedra. We also prove a two-dimensional version of this theorem, for the case in which P is a polygonal region with holes. Both results still hold if we are restricted to isothetic objects and/or axis-parallel layering directions.