Suggestions for Simplifying Point Mesh

Hello Everyone,

I'm asking this question here to know if anyone as any suggestion on how to tackle this problem.

I'm currently trying to simplify the plies resulting from a composite structural optimization.

From the .fem file I imported the nodes coordinates, the elements and the sets (the sets are the shape of the plies).

With this, my goal is to use MATLAB to simplify the outline of the shape of the ply so it becomes something that's easier to manufacture and then write the updated sets to another .fem file and use it to continue with the optimization.

Please see the images below so you can get a better understanding:

^This is an example of the shape of the plies resulting from the optimization

^This is an example of plies edited for manufacturing

^Here you can see the example of one of the plies as they result from the optimization software

^And here you can see the shape of the ply plotted in MATLAB as a 3D Scatter

When updating the shape of the plies, I can not create new points and the outline of the ply shape must be made from the outline of different existing elements.

My idea was to write something that would simply add of remove points to the set until the final result was limited by the simplest lines possible.

Sorry for this question that's probably odd and off topic but before I start I want to get your more experienced opinion!

I want to know if anyone has any suggestion of some existing tool in MATLAB that can help me achieve this goal.

Thank you very much!

[KSSV]

Okay...what I understand is you need to down-sample the data and come out with less number of data points?

[Gonçalo Pimenta]

Hello KSSV,

More or less. I have a number of points that define the whole mesh. Each ply is composed by a number of those points.

What I need to do is edit each ply by removing (or adding) points so that the shape of each ply has a straighter outline.

Thank you!