Automatic structuring of organic shapes from a single drawing

•We describe a simple and efficient method for the aesthetic closing of sub-parts contours. This method provides a consistent solution when open-end points are not explicitly defined in the input drawing.•We introduce the radial variation metric (RVM), a novel part-aware metric for complex 2D drawings, inspired by the volumetric shape image used for shape segmentation of 3D models as in [1]. Its variation along the medial axis of parts in a drawing enables the identification of salient connections between sub-parts.•We describe a recursive algorithm enabling the successive identification of sub-parts in a complex sketch and their assignment to depth-layers. The key insight lies in processing the possible junction zones between the identified sub-parts in a specific order based on the types of contours involved. This enables us to handle cases of multiple connected internal contours forming a tree-like structure.