To avoid excessive details, thus omitting less important content, of three-dimensional (3D) geometric models, this study proposes a fast mesh simplification method based on an energy-operator for 3D geometric models with salient feature-preserving efficiency. The energy-operator can evaluate the smoothness and complexity of the regional mesh in 3D models. Accordingly, it can be directly used to simultaneously reduce the candidate triangle and its three neighboring triangles. The proposed method

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... can dramatically collapse the excessive details in relatively smooth areas and preserve more important salient features during the simplification process. It can also maintain a trade-off between time efficiency and salient feature-preserving accuracy. The effectiveness and efficiency of the new method are demonstrated by comparing it with OpenMesh, which is considered the most popular mesh operation software and is capable of achieving accurate mesh simplification models. The new mesh simplification method based on the energy-operator can provide accurate and concise models for interactive 3D rendering, calculating, simulating, and analyzing.