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  1. Abstract Topology optimization (TO) has rapidly evolved from an academic exercise into an exciting discipline with numerous industrial applications. Various TO algorithms have been established, and several commercial TO software packages are now available. However, a major challenge in TO is the post-processing of the optimized models for downstream applications. Typically, optimal topologies generated by TO are faceted (triangulated) models, extracted from an underlying finite element mesh. These triangulated models are dense, poor quality, and lack feature/parametric control. This poses serious challenges to downstream applications such as prototyping/testing, design validation, and design exploration. One strategy to address this issue is to directly impose downstream requirements as constraints in the TO algorithm. However, this not only restricts the design space, it may even lead to TO failure. Separation of post-processing from TO is more robust and flexible. The objective of this paper is to provide a critical review of various post-processing methods and categorize them based both on targeted applications and underlying strategies. The paper concludes with unresolved challenges and future work. 
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  2. Abstract Lattice structures exhibit unique properties including a large surface area and a highly distributed load-path. This makes them very effective in engineering applications where weight reduction, thermal dissipation, and energy absorption are critical. Furthermore, with the advent of additive manufacturing (AM), lattice structures are now easier to fabricate. However, due to inherent surface complexity, their geometric construction can pose significant challenges. A classic strategy for constructing lattice structures exploits analytic surface–surface intersection; this, however, lacks robustness and scalability. An alternate strategy is voxel mesh-based isosurface extraction. While this is robust and scalable, the surface quality is mesh-dependent, and the triangulation will require significant postdecimation. A third strategy relies on explicit geometric stitching where tessellated open cylinders are stitched together through a series of geometric operations. This was demonstrated to be efficient and scalable, requiring no postprocessing. However, it was limited to lattice structures with uniform beam radii. Furthermore, existing algorithms rely on explicit convex-hull construction which is known to be numerically unstable. In this paper, a combinatorial stitching strategy is proposed where tessellated open cylinders of arbitrary radii are stitched together using topological operations. The convex hull construction is handled through a simple and robust projection method, avoiding expensive exact-arithmetic calculations and improving the computational efficiency. This is demonstrated through several examples involving millions of triangles. On a typical eight-core desktop, the proposed algorithm can construct approximately up to a million cylinders per second. 
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