Adaptive Tessellation for Trimmed NURBS Surface

Abstract

We present an adaptive method for tessellating the trimmed NURBS surface in the parametric domain. Given a model space tolerance ε, the algorithm first splits the NURBS surface in both the U and V directions to fit within the bounding box of the outer trimming loop. Then we subdivide the surface into Bézier patches recursively until the control net of the Bézier patch is flat enough and within the tolerance ε. By building up the quadtrees of inner trimming loops, we use the scanline algorithm to remove the patches inside the inner trimming loops. Finally, we close the inner trimming loops with a set of triangles. The resulting tessellation contains both quadrilaterals and triangles.