JUCS - Journal of Universal Computer Science 1(12): 752-761, doi: 10.3217/jucs-001-12-0752
A Novel Type of Skeleton for Polygons
expand article infoOswin Aichholzer‡, Franz Aurenhammer§, David Alberts|, Bernd Gärtner|
‡ Institute for Theoretical Computer Science, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria§ Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria| Institut für Informatik, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Corresponding author: Oswin Aichholzer ( oaich@igi.tu-graz.ac.at )

© Oswin Aichholzer, Franz Aurenhammer, David Alberts, Bernd Gärtner.
This article is freely available under the J.UCS Open Content License.
Citation: Aichholzer O, Aurenhammer F, Alberts D, Gärtner B (1995) A Novel Type of Skeleton for Polygons. JUCS - Journal of Universal Computer Science 1(12): 752-761. https://doi.org/10.3217/jucs-001-12-0752
Open Access
Abstract
A new internal structure for simple polygons, the straight skeleton, is introduced and discussed. It is composed of pieces of angular bisectores which partition the interior of a given n-gon P in a tree-like fashion into n monotone polygons. Its straight-line structure and its lower combinatorial complexity may make the straight skeleton preferable to the widely used medial axis of a polygon. As a seemingly unrelated application, the straight skeleton provides a canonical way of constructing a polygonal roof above a general layout of ground walls.
Keywords
Simple polygon, angular bisectors, internal skeleton, roof construction