Patent ID: 7446765

Claim:
A method for generation of a three-dimensional terrain model with the assistance of object-oriented vector data comprising: providing object-oriented data which contains position values which indicate at least the cartographic position of support points which describe the terrain and height values which indicate their height or depth with respect to a reference level writing the height values of the support points to grid fields of a regular grid as support values associated with the cartographic position of the support points; carrying out extrapolation in the grid by running through the grid in rows and columns, grid field by grid field and, in the first run, writing each support value which is stored in a grid field as an extrapolation value to an unoccupied grid field which is adjacent in the direction of the run, and, in all the other runs, writing each support value which is stored in a grid field and each extrapolation value derived therefrom to an unoccupied grid field which is adjacent in the direction of the run; allocating to all the extrapolation values a distance figure which indicates the proximity of the extrapolation value to its support value; repeating the runs until all of the grid fields are occupied; and, subjecting derived extrapolation values to weighted interpolation in the grid.