Increasing the smoothness of bicubic spline surfaces (Q1070751)

One of the goals in the computer aided design of surfaces is to obtain smooth, shape-preserving surfaces. To this end, interpolation and smoothing are combined. A smoothing algorithm for bicubic spline surfaces is presented. It works on a bicubic tensor-product surface, which in a first step is obtained from the rectangular mesh of 3-dimensional data points. The oscillatory behaviour is measured by a quantity into which Adini's twists enter. An iterative global smoothing algorithm which optimizes the measures is introduced. Although \(C^ 2\)-continuity is lost and the obtained surface is only \(C^ 1\), unwanted oscillations are reduced. Test results are presented.