[postgis-users] TIN support yes or no?

[Kevin Neufeld]

Courtin Olivier wrote:
> 
> On Sep 20, 2008, at 6:44 PM, Paul Ramsey wrote:
> 
> Paul,
> 
>> and I have a hard time reconciling that to the
>> real use-case needs of TIN-in-database (really large, region-spanning,
>> billion-face TINs).
> 
> Well, why want to store such kind of TIN structure into a database ? :)

So one doesn't have to recompute a surface repeatedly.  I'm currently 
working on a project where I need to build up a surface model on a 
provincial scale, computing the overlay of streams and other 
hydrographic features.  Since I only have the resources to build a small 
portion of the entire surface at a time, I'm forced to generate a very 
small surface, and with a large buffered area, slowly pan over the 
entire province, thus generating the TIN in the overlapping buffered 
areas repeatedly (estimated to take a total time 1200 CPU hours).

Having a reusable TIN stored in the database is rather appealing.

This is of particular interest: streaming TIN generation - nice!
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~isenburg/papers/ilsst-tin2dem-06.pdf

Cheers,
Kevin