Convex Polygon Triangulation Based on Symmetry

Abstract

A polygon with n nodes can be divided into two subpolygons by an internal diagonal through node n. Splitting the polygon along diagonal δi,n and diagonal δn−i,n, i∈{2,…,⌊n/2⌋} results in mirror images. Obviously, there are ⌊n/2⌋−1 pairs of these reflectively symmetrical images. The influence of the observed symmetry on polygon triangulation is studied. The central result of this research is the construction of an efficient algorithm used for generating convex polygon triangulations in minimal time and without generating repeat triangulations. The proposed algorithm uses the diagonal values of the Catalan triangle to avoid duplicate triangulations with negligible computational costs and provides significant speedups compared to known methods.

Keywords

• triangulating
• triangulations
• symmetry
• convex polygon
• Catalan number