I am looking for a basic text on Euler structures, in particular smooth Euler structures, and the relation to combinatorial Euler structures; It is known that given a combinatorial Euler structure on a manifold, one can construct a smooth one by constructing a vector field the flow of which is determined by the orientation of the segments in the combinatorial structure.
I've tried reading from the book "The Reidemeister torsion of 3-manifolds", and from papers by Turaev. However, those text are a bit difficult for me, so I was wondering whether there exists a more basic text (even some lecture notes, blog posts etc.), preferably more geometrically oriented.
If anyone knows of a paper mentioning a construction in the opposite direction (from smooth to combinatorial), that would also be extremely helpful.