Technical section: Smoothing an arc spline

  • Authors:
  • Z. Li;D. S. Meek

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada R3T 2N2;Department of Computer Science, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada R3T 2N2

  • Venue:
  • Computers and Graphics
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Arc splines are G^1 continuous curves made of circular arcs and straight-line segments. They have the advantages that the curvature of an arc spline is known and controlled at all but a finite number of points, and that the offset curve of an arc spline is another arc spline. Arc splines are used by computer-controlled machines as a natural curve along which to cut and are used by highway route planners as a natural curve along which to plan the centre line of a road. In this paper, it is shown how to increase the smoothness of a planar arc spline by replacing parts of it and thus to create a G^2 continuous curve. The replacement parts are low-degree NURBS curves: cubic Bezier curves and quadratic rational Bezier curves.