Abstract
We present a fast, accurate, and robust method to compute the minimum distance between two 2D and 3D NURBS curves. This is carried out by first decomposing both of the NURBS curves into their piecewise-Bezier forms. Candidate pairs, as a subset of all possible pairs, are extracted based on a two-level selection process. The first-level selection uses upper-lower bounds of Bezier subcurves to remove pairs. The second-level selection is based on the spatial relationship test between a pair of Bezier curves. An iterative multidimensional Newton-Raphson method is applied on all candidate pairs in order to calculate the approximate local minimum distances. Finally, by comparing all local minimum distances between a pair of Bezier subcurves, we are able to find the global minimum distance. The accuracy is improved by further use of the multidimensional Newton-Raphson method to give high accuracy. Source code is available online.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
