NURBS surface fitting using orthogonal coordinate transform for rapid product development

Abstract

Constructing a CAD model from a physical model plays a key role in some rapid product development processes. Presented in the paper is a method of fitting NURBS surfaces for rotational freeform shapes: (1) cloud-of-points data (COP-data) representing a rotational freeform shape are transformed into an orthogonal coordinate system, (2) a single-valued B-spline surface is fitted to the transformed data, and (3) the resulting B-spline surface is converted to a 3D NURBS surface by applying a symbolic product operation with a quadratic NURBS base-geometry. Compared to the existing 'direct' fitting methods, the proposed method has some distinctive advantages: it provides a natural means to parameterization, enables to recover exact NURBS geometry, when the COP-data represent a true surface-of-revolution, and allows an easy point-membership classification for NURBS-bounded solid objects. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.