1. A computer-implemented method for encoding a 3D mesh model, wherein the 3D mesh model comprises one or more components, the method being executed by a computer and comprising: determining an orthonormal basis in 3D space for each of the one or more components, wherein Principal Component Analysis based on the vertices of a component is used and wherein each vertex belongs to one or more triangles, and wherein, for said Principal Component Analysis, each vertex of the component is assigned a weight which is determined from the areas of the triangles to which the vertex belongs; encoding object coordinate system information of the component using a hardware encoder; normalizing the orientation of each of the one or more components relative to a world coordinate system, wherein for each of said one or more components a transformation is used that is obtained from the determined orthonormal basis of the component; quantizing the normalized vertex positions; and encoding the quantized vertex positions.