The paper presents a topology-oriented robust algorithm for the incremental construction of line arrangements. In order to achieve a robust implementation, the topological and geometrical computations are strictly separated. The topological part is proved to be reliable without any assumption on the accuracy of the geometrical part. A self-correcting property is introduced to minimize the effect of numerical errors. Computational experiments show how the self-correcting property works, and we also discuss some applications of the algorithm.

This paper surveys two methods for designing numerically robust geometric algorithms. The first method is the exact-arithmetic method, in which numerical computations are done in sufficiently high precision so that all the topological judgements can be done correctly. This method is usually accompanied with lazy evaluation and symbolic perturbation in order to reduce the computational cost and the implementation cost. The second method is the topology-oriented method, in which the consistency of the topological structure is considered as higher-priority information than numerical computation, and thus inconsistency is avoided. Both of the methods are described with the implementation examples.