It is a type of boundary representation and describes both the geometry and topology of a model.
This kind of adjacency information is useful for algorithms such as subdivision surface.
The winged edge data structure allows for quick traversal between faces, edges, and vertices due to the explicitly linked structure of the network.
It serves adjacency queries in constant time with little storage overhead.
This rich form of specifying an unstructured grid is in contrast to simpler specifications of polygon meshes such as a node and element list, or the implied connectivity of a regular grid.