There are two types of surfaces.

Analytic surfaces are based on wireframe entities, and

include the plane surface, ruled surface, surface of
revolution, and tabulated cylinder.

Synthetic surfaces are formed from a given set of data

points or curves and include the bicubic, Bezier, B-spline,
and Coons patches.

A Ruled surface interpolates linearly

between two boundary curves that
define the surface (rails). Rails can be
any wireframe entity.

Cones & Cylinders

Singly Ruled

Doubly Ruled : Hyperbolaid of One

Sheet & Hyperbolic paraboloid

This is an axisymmetric surface that can

model axisymmetric objects. It is
generated by rotating a planar
wireframe entity in space about the
axis of symmetry at certain angle.

This is a surface generated by translating a planar

curve a certain distance along a specified direction
(axis of the cylinder)

Bezier surface
Bezier surface requires a grid of control points
for its definition.
Evaluate the parametric function at a set of u, w
values generate a point on a Bezier Surface

p(u,w) =
=0
=0 ij Bi,m(u) Bj,n(w)
Control points pij : Vertices (rectangular grid of
(m +1) x (n + 1) points
Bi,m(u), Bj,n(w) : Basis functions

m, n : Degrees of the basis functions

A cubic Bezier patch

For a 4 x 4 grid of points produces a bi cubic surface.

The corresponding matrix equation is
p(u, w)

(1-u)3
3u(1-u)2
3u2(1-u)
u3

p11

p12

p13

p14

p21

p22

p23

p24

p31

p32

p33

p34

p41

p42

p43

p44

(1-w)3
3w(1-w)2
3w2(1-w)
w3

Only the 4 points p11, p41, p14 and p44 actually lie on
the surface.
The other points control the boundary curves and
interior of the surface, but do not lie on the surface.

B-spline surface
Given the following information:
a set of m+1 rows and n+1 control points pi,j, where 0
<= i <= m and 0 <= j <= n;
a knot vector of h + 1 knots in the u-direction, U =
{ u0, u1, ...., uh };
a knot vector of k + 1 knots in the v-direction, V =
{ v0, v1, ...., vk };
the degree p in the u-direction; and
the degree q in the v-direction;

where Ni,p(u) and Nj,q(v) are B-spline basis functions of

degree p and q, respectively.

Note that the fundamental identities, one for each

direction, must hold:
h = m + p + 1 and k = n + q + 1.
The set of control points is usually referred to as
the control net
The range of u and v is 0 and 1.

Coons patch
A patch that is fitted between four arbitrary
boundary curves. The patch is constructed purely
from information given on its boundary and from
auxiliary functions, called blending functions, whose
effect is to blend together four separate boundary
curves to give a single well-defined surface.

Fillet surface
This is a B-spline surface that blends two surfaces
together

Offset surface
Existing surfaces can be offset to create new ones
identical in shape but may have different dimensions.
To create a hollow cylinder, the outer or inner
cylinder can be created using a cylinder command and
the other one can be created by an offset command.