Computing parallel curves on parametric surfaces

Generating parallel curves on parametric surfaces is an important issue in many industrial settings. Given an initial curve (called the base curve or generator) on a parametric surface, the goal is to obtain curves on the surface that are parallel to the generator. By parallel curves we mean curves that are at a given distance from the generator, where distance is measured point-wise along certain characteristic curves (on the surface) orthogonal to the generator. Except for a few particular cases, computing these parallel curves is a very difficult and challenging problem. In fact, only partial, incomplete solutions have been reported so far in the literature. In this paper we introduce a simple yet efficient method to fill this gap. In clear contrast with other existing techniques, the most important feature of our method is its generality: it can be successfully applied to any differentiable parametric surface and to any kind of characteristic curves on surfaces. To evaluate our proposal, some illustrative examples (not addressed with previous methods) for the cases of section, vector-field, and geodesic parallels are discussed. Our experimental results show the excellent performance of the method even for the complex case of NURBS surfaces.