Patent ID: 7174280

Claim:
A system for replacing a direct surface manipulation (DSM) surface with an independent Non-Uniform Rational B-spline (NURBS) surface patch of a geometric model comprising: a computer system, wherein said computer system includes a memory, a processor, a user input device and a display device; a computer generated geometric model stored in said memory of said computer system, wherein the geometric model is in a computer-assisted design (CAD) format; and wherein a user uses the computer system and the computer system samples data points of a DSM feature, parameterizes the sampled data points, determines knot vectors for a fitted NURBS surface patch, sets-up an equation system, solves the equation system to determine control points of the NURBS surface patch, fits the interior of the NURBS surface patch to the sampled data points of the DSM surface, and replaces the DSM surface with the NURBS surface patch.