Chain-based polyline tessellation algorithm for cartographic rendering

ABSTRACT

Although the extrusion of 1D polylines into a 2D polygon and the tessellation of the polygon into primitives has been performed in the field of computer graphics, the efficient, robust, and high-quality tessellation of thick polylines that supports various cartographic styles for polyline rendering remains a practical challenge. We examined and compared existing vertex-, segment-, and polygon-based algorithms, and present a chain-based tessellation algorithm for cartographic rendering: points in the polyline are classified into abrupt and smooth points according to their point spacing, angle and thickness. The polylines are then divided into abrupt and smooth chains by clustering points that are adjacent and of the same type. An optimal algorithm is also presented to continuously tessellate the smooth chains into minimum geometric primitives and efficiently tessellate the abrupt chains into geometric primitives. We implemented the proposed algorithm and present the results of robustness, efficiency, quality, and cartographic styling tests conducted on real-world polylines. The results indicate that this approach has substantial advantages when considering all four requirements (robustness, efficiency, quality, and the support for various cartographic styles).