Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!usc!wuarchive!udel!brahms.udel.edu!robeson
From: robeson@brahms.udel.edu (Scott M Robeson)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics.visualization
Subject: Re: Help: Creating 3-D mesh from arbitrary points.
Keywords: mesh, points, tesselation, triangulation
Message-ID: <18916@brahms.udel.edu>
Date: 20 Feb 91 18:37:06 GMT
References: <1991Feb14.190639.26922@lynx.CS.ORST.EDU>
Organization: University of Delaware
Lines: 19

In article <1991Feb14.190639.26922@lynx.CS.ORST.EDU> johng@OCE.ORST.EDU (John A. Gregor) writes:
>We have a relatively large (several thousand) set of ocean samples in
>3-D that we want to visualize.  Unfortunately, all the tools we have
>demand that the data be represented as gridded data or as a connected
>mesh (either tetrahedrons xor hexahedrons).  

A potential problem with using a "canned" routine here is that
these data are distributed on the surface of an oblate spheroid:
the earth.  The interpolation should really be done using
spherical trigonometry to compute the distance-weighting (or
angles if the interpolator requires such information).  There
are a couple of papers on spherical interpolation (that I know of):

Renka, R. (1984) "Interpolation of data on the surface of a sphere,"
  ACM Trans. Math. Software, 10(4), 417.

Willmott, C. et al. (1985) "Small-scale climate maps: A sensitivity
  analysis of some common assumptions associated with grid-point
  interpolation and contouring," American Cartographer, 12(1), 5.