  We give a detailed general description of a recent geometrical discretisation
scheme and illustrate, by explicit numerical calculation, the scheme's ability
to capture topological features. The scheme is applied to the Abelian
Chern-Simons theory and leads, after a necessary field doubling, to an
expression for the discrete partition function in terms of untwisted
Reidemeister torsion and of various triangulation dependent factors. The
discrete partition function is evaluated computationally for various
triangulations of $S^3$ and of lens spaces. The results confirm that the
discretisation scheme is triangulation independent and coincides with the
continuum partition function
