[SciPy-user] Approximate volume of an irregular triangular mesh.

[Dharhas Pothina]

Hi,

I have a unstructured mesh in the form of triangular prisms. ie a irregular triangular mesh in 2D extruded in z to form prisms. The mesh is in the format:

Node# XCoord YCoord Depth
...
...
Element# Node1 Node2 Node3
...
...

I want to calculate the approximate volume of this mesh. The brute force way is to cycle through each triangular element and calculate the area of each triangle and multiply it by the average depth of the three nodes of the element. I was wondering if there was a simpler way maybe by just using the surface defined by the nodes and ignoring the connectivity. 

thanks,

- dharhas