Abstract: An efficient hierarchical multi-resolution method based on Hierarchical Meshes (HM) supports selective and progressive transmission and rendering of 3D geometric models. Methods are disclosed for generating the HM, for selective and progressive transmission of the details of a geometric model represented by the HM, and for selectively adding or removing details to or from a desired region of the model. A data structure based on the HM is also disclosed. The HM has a tree of patches of progressively higher levels from a leaf level to a root level. Each patch of one level is merged from respective connected patches of the next lower level. The patches are simplified recursively from the leaf level to the root level, such that the patches of each level represent respective regions of the geometric model at a resolution that is progressively reducing from the leaf level to the root level, for selective and progressive transmission and rendering.