Single-valued surfaces in cylindrical coordinates (Q1181947)

In surface modelling, piecewise parametric surfaces are often used. If these surfaces define a solid object, there is no immediate algorithm to determine whether a given point is within or outside the solid. Therefore single-valued surfaces in cylindrical coordinates are of interest, because they define half spaces. In this paper, a method for the approximation of single-valued surfaces in cylindrical coordinates is given. The resulting surfaces are not tensor-product surfaces, but they have many of the properties of the Bézier scheme such as the corner point interpolation and the containment in the convex hull. Conditions for the continuity of piecewise surfaces are formulated, and a third radial parameter is introduced to define volumes with internal parametrization.