Automatic construction of surfaces with prescribed shape (Q1110259)

The design process in the automotive industry requires the construction of high-quality surfaces with strong shape conditions. In the interactive interface to the procedure given here, the operator controls the shape by setting desired curvature, convexity, smoothness, and fitting conditions. The procedure begins by constructing a preliminary surface with the desired smoothness from a network of curves. Both the network and the patch topology are determined from a set of ordered fitting points. Then the preliminary surface is turned into a convex one by transversal modifications. By a suitable linearization of the normal curvature, the problem is turned into a sequence of linear programming problems. These are solved by an implementation of the Karmarkar method.