Analysis of geometric primitives in quantitative structure models of tree stems

One way to model a tree is to use a collection of geometric primitives to represent the surface and topology of the stem and branches of a tree. The circular cylinder is often used as the geometric primitive, but it is not the only possible choice. We investigate various geometric primitives and modelling schemes, discuss their properties and give practical estimates for expected modelling errors associated with the primitives. We find that the circular cylinder is the most robust primitive in the sense of a well-bounded volumetric modelling error, even with noise and gaps in the data. Its use does not cause errors significantly larger than those with more complex primitives, while the latter are much more sensitive to data quality. However, in some cases, a hybrid approach with more complex primitives for the stem is useful.