Floria- 
yrithm, 
straint 
mputa- 
), 1991, 
be vis- 
mputer 
by vec- 
ictorial 
tecture 
.g. Ste- 
may be 
-gener- 
reflect 
ile pic- 
display 
e hand 
evation 
Combi- 
nhance 
sers, an 
blished 
t a vec- 
| raster 
all, an 
ailable. 
1 be in- 
erfaces 
  
h-west. 
  
  
  
Fig. 3. A TIN of one of the 8 facades of the dome. 
Based on the system conception described above, two 
typical examples selected from the materials of the 
DOME OF THE ROCK, Jerusalem, were processed. 
The Dome built by Caliph Abd el-Malik in 691 was re- 
corded using both a metric and a semi-metric camera 
in 1985 and 1986, respectively (Hell et al, 1988). The 
aim of this work was the documentation of the archi- 
tecture for studies of the art history and for the pres- 
ervation work. Figure 2 shows the dome from 
south-west. 
The first example deals with one of the 8 facades 
which are 12 m high and some 20 m long and form a 
regular octogonal prism. For data acquisition, only 
structure lines of the facade were acquired from ste- 
reo models on an analytical plotter, since the facade 
consists of planes. A TIN (cf. Fig. 3) was then con- 
structed using the raster-based triangulation (Tang, 
1991, 1992). To be visualized using raster graphics, the 
TIN was converted into a dense raster DSM by planar 
  
rates 
  
FS 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Fig. 4. A shaded image. 
interpolation of triangular facets. Based on the raster 
DSM, a shaded image was first generated (cf. Fig. 4) 
and then used as coverage information for the gener- 
ation of a raster perspective image (cf. Fig. 5). 
  
Fig. 5. A perspective image coverred by shading. 
The second example handles a part of the cylinder on 
the central rotunda. The outer cylinder has a diameter 
of more than 24 meters and is coverred by tiles. Pri- 
mary data were also captured on an analytical plotter. 
In accordance with the specific shape and in order to 
keep the data amount minimum, a special strategy was 
applied for data acquisition as well as for surface 
modelling. Actually, the cylinder is approximated by 
narrow rectangular planes, the tiles. Hence, primary 
data were accordingly acquired. As mentioned above, 
a TIN was at first constructed. In order to obtain a 
smoothed DSM, the TIN was then converted into a