CONSURF. I: Introduction of the conic lofting tile (Q687329)

Conic lofting has been introduced by \textit{I.D. Faux} and \textit{M. J. Pratt} [Computational geometry for design and manufacture, Ellis Horwood (1979; Zbl 0395.51001)] as a computer adaptation of a method of descriptive geometry generating surfaces by blending patches. This paper is concerned with the mathematical foundations of a method that automatically transforms graphically given surfaces into mathematically defined surfaces composed of rational bicubic patches. They obtain a description which is both simple and easily implemented by systematically using frames (although they do not use the word), i.e., column vectors of vectors. This way of doing analytic or differential geometry was used by the reviewer [Differential geometry (1963; Zbl 0116.134)] and is used here in its full power. The paper is required to study for anyone interested in surface modeling. The application to automated modeling is promised for a further paper.