Cañas, Guillermo D.Gortler, Steven2012-09-252009Cañas, Guillermo D. and Steven J. Gortler. 2009. Shape operator metric for surface normal approximation. In Proceedings of the 18th International Meshing Roundtable, October 25-28, 2009, Salt Lake City, Utah, ed. Brett W. Clark, Part 6, 447-461. Berlin: Springer.978-3-642-04318-5http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:9639956This work deals with the problem of practical mesh generation for surface normal approximation. Part of its contribution is in presenting previous work in a unified framework. A new algorithm for surface normal approximation is then introduced which improves upon existing ones in a number of aspects. In particular, it produces better approximations of surfaces both in practice and in the theoretical limit regime. Additionally, it resolves in a simple way some of the problems that previous methods for surface approximation suffered from.en-USMonograph or Book2012-09-2510.1007/978-3-642-04319-2_26