Patent ID: 7920142

Claim:
A method for identifying asymptotes in an approximated geometric form, the method comprising: identifying a set of data points that represent an approximated geometric form, the data points being organized into segments collectively approximating a shape of the approximated geometric form, the segments being straight line segments or polygon segments, and the data points forming end points of the straight line segments or vertices of the polygon segments; determining a visible range of the geometric form to display; looping through successive segments of the approximated geometric form, and on each loop, for a current segment: making a decision whether to draw the current segment based upon a prediction of whether the current segment traverses an asymptote within the visible range, wherein the decision whether to draw the current segment is accomplished at least in part by: upon determining that a first data point of the current segment is outside the visible range and a second data point of the current segment is inside the visible range, determining whether the first and second data points are on opposite sides of a midpoint of the visible range, and if so making a decision not to draw the current segment, else making a decision to draw the current segment, upon determining that all the data points of the current segment are within the visible range, applying a heuristic technique to decide whether to draw the current segment including if it is determined that the first and second data points are on opposite sides of the midpoint of the visible range, and if it is further determined that that a first adjacent segment and a second adjacent segment have respective slopes that trend in opposite directions, then making a decision not to draw the current segment, else making a decision to draw the current segment; and displaying on a graphical user interface of a computing device, a graph of the segments of the approximated geometric form in the visible range, the graph not including those segments that were decided not to be drawn.