Watertight surface reconstruction method for CAD models based on optimal transport

Feature-preserving mesh reconstruction from point clouds is challenging. Implicit methods tend to fit smooth surfaces and cannot be used to reconstruct sharp features. Explicit reconstruction methods are sensitive to noise and only interpolate sharp features when points are distributed on feature lines. We propose a watertight surface reconstruction method based on optimal transport that can accurately reconstruct sharp features often present in CAD models. We formalize the surface reconstruction problem by minimizing the optimal transport cost between the point cloud and the reconstructed surface. The algorithm consists of initialization and refinement steps. In the initialization step, the convex hull of the point cloud is deformed under the guidance of a transport plan to obtain an initial approximate surface. Next, the mesh surface was optimized using operations including vertex relocation and edge collapses/flips to obtain feature-preserving results. Experiments demonstrate that our method can preserve sharp features while being robust to noise and missing data.