Q:

How to get Point indexes for triangles from a set of points

I am not sure if I am asking the correct question, but I am just starting to learn OpenGL ES 2.0 and the tutorial I am following had me create a mesh by defining points in a struct then creating an array of "indexes" that define triangles using the list of points. Is there a way to take a huge array of points and compute the triangles automatically? they are in relative order (i.e. x and y are an ordered grid) z can vary. It just seems like there should be a function or algorithm, to take care of the indices for me.
1--2--3--4--5--6--7--8--9--10
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
21-22-23-24-25-26-27-28-29-30

EXAMPLE: I want points 1,2,11 to be a triangle, then 2,11,12 and 3,12,13 and so on.
http://www.raywenderlich.com/3664/opengl-es-2-0-for-iphone-tutorial <-- This is the tutorial I am using if it helps.

A:

There is a lot of research in this area. It's normally much faster to draw triangle strips than individual triangles because you only need to specify N+1 points for N triangles rather than 3*N points.
Most of the research is to take an arbitrary mesh (from eg a Delauney triangulation) and convert it into the minimum number of stripes.

