SUMMARY OF NURBS-ADVANTAGES AND DRAWBACKS

INTRODUCTION : Non-Uniform Ration B-Splines aka NURBS have been the most suitable
method of geometry representation for computer aided design and manufacturing markets.
The NURBS models had become the predominant raw material for gridding and meshing in
computer aided engineering tools.The basis upon which NURBS was most utilized was its
ability to accurately represent conic sections.
The paper NURBS considered harmful for gridding by Letcher and Shook describes the
drawbacks of the NURBS for meshing and gridding in CFD volumes and proposes a different
method for the same.
The drawbacks are enumerated as follows:
1. The NURBS is an open system meaning that most operations on NURBS objects do
not result in NURBS objects.
2. NURBS implementations rely heavily on fitting and approximation to forcibly close an
inherently open system.
3. Division by zero.
4. Non-uniform parametrization of arcs and arc lengths.
5. NURBS surfaces flatten towards the corners even though the original product has some
curvature that needs to be represented with.
6. Irregular meshes from use of non-uniform weights at different vertices.
7. Ill conditioned basis for surface fitting.
8. Lack of closure redeeming the fact that it is an open system.
The significant features of NURBS surfaces are:
1. The edges must have identical knot locations in 3-D space.
2. They must consist of identical rational Bezier curve segments between the knots.
3. Identical degree k in the parametric direction.
4. Identical knots in the parametric direction.
5. Identical control points along this edge.
6. Proportional weights on these control points.
The above talked of features of the NURBS invariably result in discrepancies between
edges,still remains open and hence the need for the other method that is proposed called as
relational geometry in the paper by Letcher and Shook.