A method for surgical resection planning of a mass includes the steps of, modelling the mass based on a plurality of physical dimensions, determining a plurality of safety margins around a plurality of features within the mass, simulating a resection surface on the mass that includes a plurality of triangles, optimizing local area and position of a first of the plurality of triangles on the resection surface based on a triangle-based algorithm, updating the simulation of the resection surface, and repeating the steps of optimizing and updating for each of the plurality of triangles on the resection surface.