Advanced Surface Construction Techniques

Abstract

In this chapter we cover several advanced surface construction techniques, namely swung, skinned, swept, Gordon, and Coons surfaces. Roughly speaking, the idea in this chapter is to take one or two curves, or sets of curves, and to create a NURBS surface which interpolates these curves; i.e., the given curves are isoparametric curves in the NURBS surface. Notice that this is fundamentally different from the interpolation to discrete point and derivative data presented in Chapter 9. In some of the constructions, it may not be obvious to the reader that the surfaces created do indeed satisfy the desired constraints. We leave it as an exercise for the reader to convince himself of this, either by mathematical proof or by software implementation.