POLYGONS 1 Princeton University Press（多边形1 普林斯顿大学出版社）.pdfVIP

Copyrighted Material POLYGONS 1 Polygons are to planar geometry as integers are to numerical mathemat- ics: a discrete subset of the full universe of possibilities that lends itself to efficient computations. And triangulations are the prime factorizations of polygons, alas without the benefit of the “Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic” guaranteeing unique factorization. This chapter intro- duces triangulations (Section 1.1) and their combinatorics (Section 1.2), and then applies these concepts to the alluring art gallery theorem (Section 1.3), a topic at the roots of computational geometry which remains an active area of research today. Here we encounter a surprising difference between 2D triangulations and 3D tetrahedralizations. Triangulations are highly constrained decompositions of polygons. Dissections are less constrained partitions, and engender the fascinating question of which pairs of polygons can be dissected and reassembled into each other. This so-called “scissors congruence” (Section 1.4) again highlights the fundamental difference between 2D and 3D (Section 1.5), a theme throughout the book. 1.1 DIAGONALS AND TRIANGULATIONS Computational geometry is fundamentally discrete as opposed to con- tinuous. Computation with curves and smooth surfaces are generally considered part of another field, often called “geometric modeling.” The emphasis on computation leads to a focus on representations of geometric objects that are simple and easily manipulated. Fundamental building blocks are the point and the line segment, the portion of a line between two points. From these are built more complex structures. Among the most important of these structures