The automatic generation of block-structured hexahedral meshes is a challenging problem, solved in practice through the use of dedicated interactive software, such as Magix3D, which is developed and maintained at CEA DAM. Using such software, a specialist engineer may spend several days creating the expected mesh.

The objective of this thesis is to help such an engineer to quickly sketch initial block structures with a hexahedral-dominant structure by relying on the medial object of the 3D geometric domain to be discretized. When considering CAD-type geometric domains, represented by their boundary, the medial object provides volumetric information intrinsic to the domains, which will guide the engineer in creating individual hexahedral blocks.

The objective of this thesis is twofold: first, to propose an efficient method for generating 3D medial objects; and second, to develop an algorithm and an associated interactive tool for creating predominantly hexahedral block structures.