Edge contour is an important feature of surface

which plays a special role in shape matching

surface conjunction. Due to the irregular distribution of space mesh data

the contour of surface cannot be gained from coordinate of points directly. So a method to detect edges of triangular mesh surface is brought out in this passage. If the adjacent points of the certain point can be formed a closed curve form ridges of triangular mesh

this point can be determined to a edge point. Scan the adjacent edge points of every edge point to get the sequence of edge points. This method has the advantage of simple and easy to implement. Which has been employed in the computer aided cultural relic restoration system

and has been proved to process tri-dimension data correctly and efficiently. This method is universal

which can also be applied to other mesh data.