One of the major issues of mesh generation today is access to geometry in an accurate and efficient manner. This paper will review several of the issues associated with accessing geometry for mesh generation. This paper will also evaluate alternative techniques for accessing geometry and review how these techniques address, or do not address, the issues related to geometry access for mesh generation. The techniques for geometry access to be reviewed include: translation and healing, discrete representations, direct geometry access, and unified topology accessing geometry directly. The intent of this paper is to provide an overview to the alternative approaches and how they address the specific issues related to accessing geometry for mesh generation. It is not the intent of this paper to provide detailed algorithms related to accessing or repairing geometry data.