Mechanisms for constructing isocurves and corresponding surfaces to provide inter-surface continuity

摘要

A mechanism is disclosed for reconstructing trimmed surfaces whose underlying spline surfaces intersect in model space, so that the reconstructed version of each original trimmed surface is geometrically close to the original trimmed surface, and so that the boundary of each respective reconstructed version includes a model space trim curve that approximates the geometric intersection of the underlying spline surfaces. Thus, the reconstructed versions will meet in a continuous fashion along the model space curve. The mechanism may operate on already trimmed surfaces such as may be available in a boundary representation object model, or, on spline surfaces that are to be trimmed, e.g., as part of a Boolean operation in a computer-aided design system. The ability to create objects with surface-surface intersections that are free of gaps liberates a whole host of downstream industries to perform their respective applications without the burdensome labor of gap repair, and thus, multiplies the efficacy of those industries.