Current open source slicers for 3D-Printers such as slic3r or CuraEngine divide objects into a set of equally thick layers, where the value for the layer height is given by the user. This is just fine for many applications, as it gives the most equally structured surface.
The idea to determine the layer height automatically by analyzing the structure of the surface in the objects current region has been lingering around in the scientific community for about 2 decades now. Slicing with thick layers results in a surface like this:
