MeshMill 0.2.0 for Windows

MeshMill 0.2.0 adds substantial large-mesh and interface performance improvements, a higher-quality GPU-guided reduction option, measured quality comparisons, improved navigation, and a production Windows installer.

Performance improvements

• Parallel large-mesh analysis: analysis of the 4,126,315-triangle reference mesh improved from 10.531 seconds with one worker to 1.838 seconds with eight workers, a 5.73x speedup. Both runs produced identical bounds, 50 adaptive tiles, and 4,126,315 assigned triangles.
• Faster adaptive-index creation: complete index creation improved from 8.836 seconds to 5.406 seconds with a warm filesystem cache, a 1.63x speedup. Partition publication remains single-owner so output stays deterministic and tile files do not receive competing writes.
• Memory-aware STL analysis: large binary STL files are inspected and partitioned in bounded blocks instead of requiring the complete source to be allocated at once.
• Bounded overview loading: meshes above the configured memory budget open as a manageable read-only overview rather than exhausting system memory or freezing the interface.
• Automatic processing budgets: MeshMill derives worker counts, overview limits, and geometry-job capacity from available CPU, RAM, and VRAM instead of relying on a fixed triangle ceiling.
• Adaptive spatial indexing: uneven meshes are divided according to their measured triangle distribution. The reference mesh produced 50 independently addressable tiles with a 65,075-triangle median and a 249,043-triangle maximum.
• Reusable caches: persistent source fingerprints, spatial indexes, GPU kernels, density data, and comparison results avoid repeating validated work when the underlying mesh and settings have not changed.
• Responsive geometry operations: reduction, analysis, loading, and other heavy geometry work run outside the interface, with progress reporting and cancellation where the operation can be safely interrupted.
• Measured CPU and GPU dispatch: small jobs stay on the CPU when GPU transfer and synchronization would cost more than the calculation. GPU analysis is used where resident data and parallel surface measurements provide a measured benefit.
• Expanded performance telemetry: the metrics panel now separates CPU, RAM, GPU, and VRAM and reports geometry activity, processing capacity, cumulative I/O totals, active I/O time, and peak transfer samples.
• Faster close-range navigation: pointer-centered orbiting and depth-scaled panning keep viewport movement usable when working close to dense geometry.

These improvements were implemented before and independently of Depth Adaptive QEM. The out-of-core work in this release covers bounded inspection, overview loading, indexing, scheduling, and caching. Full streaming reduction and cross-tile assembly remain roadmap work.

Depth Adaptive QEM

Depth Adaptive QEM is a new optional GPU / Higher Quality algorithm. It uses adaptive, physically scaled surface probes on the GPU, then hands the measured surface guidance to boundary-preserving Fast QEM assembly.

Fast QEM remains the default because it starts immediately and works on every supported system. Depth Adaptive QEM is available when MeshMill detects compatible NVIDIA hardware.

On the project’s 4,126,315-triangle reference mesh at a matched 250,000-triangle target:

Algorithm	Time	RMS error	P95 error	Maximum drift	Area error
Fast QEM	9.827 s	1.1721 mm	2.3504 mm	0.6987 mm	0.3993%
Depth Adaptive QEM	10.156 s	1.0668 mm	2.0586 mm	0.0234 mm	0.1241%

This measured run improved RMS surface error by 9.0%, P95 error by 12.4%, maximum dimension drift by 96.7%, and area error by 68.9%, with a 3.3% runtime increase.

The Windows packages include the minimal CUDA runtime needed by this algorithm. It does not install a system-wide CUDA toolkit or a background service. The first run prepares and caches GPU kernels for the local machine; later runs reuse that cache.

Quality comparisons

• Added a compact measured-quality row for RMS, P95, area, topology, drift, and reduction.
• Added plain-language tooltips describing each metric and its tradeoffs.
• Added algorithm comparison documentation, benchmark tables, formulas, and visual comparisons.
• Published the supporting paper: Depth Adaptive QEM: GPU-Guided Surface Measurement for Practical Mesh Reduction.

Viewport and workflow

• Left-drag now pans the viewport.
• Middle-drag orbits around visible geometry under the pointer.
• Panning scales with the picked geometry depth, including close zoom levels.
• Improved maximized-window layout, overlays, ruler visibility, and zoom shortcuts.
• Added per-application CUDA GPU selection by PCI address for multi-GPU systems.
• Added manual update checks and optional checks when the app opens. Automatic checking is off by default, and no update service or scheduled task is installed.
• Verified installer upgrades preserve settings and reopen the active STL when requested.

Research and engineering notes

The release documentation records the tested CPU and GPU strategies, relevant public research, formulas, benchmark methods, failures, and design decisions. GPU prototypes that did not improve the complete reduction path remain documented rather than being shipped as misleading acceleration options.

Roadmap additions

• Printable solid synthesis derived from Depth Adaptive QEM.
• A hybrid depth-and-density adaptive reduction path.
• Full out-of-core reduction and assembly.
• Multi-mesh workspaces, alignment, overlap analysis, and merge workflows.
• Control profiles and expanded navigation customization.
• Optional distributed geometry processing and coordinated synthesis.

Windows download

Most users should download MeshMill-0.2.0-windows-x64-setup.exe.

• Installer: normal Windows installation with Start menu and optional desktop shortcuts. Upgrades preserve settings and shortcut choices; uninstall removes MeshMill preferences.
• Portable ZIP: no installation. Extract the complete ZIP, then run MeshMill.exe.
• Sample STL: optional large test geometry for experimenting with MeshMill.
• SHA256SUMS.txt: checksums for verifying downloads.

These packages are self-contained. Python, Node.js, and development dependencies are not required.

Platform status

Windows is the supported release platform. Linux and macOS downloads are published separately as clearly labeled testing previews because they have not received the same real-hardware validation.

Localization status

MeshMill 0.2.0 is currently distributed in English. Updated translations were deferred because the available translation, validation, and review work exceeded current resource and processing capacity. Existing community translation files remain in the repository for future completion, but they are not included in these packages because they have not passed the 0.2.0 release validation gates.

Licensing

MeshMill is released under GPL-3.0. Third-party notices and the CUDA redistribution exception are included with the source and packages.