Cone spline approximation via fat conic spline fitting

Fat conic section and fat conic spline are defined. With well established properties of fat conic splines, the problem of approximating a ruled surface by a tangent smooth cone spline can then be changed as the problem of fitting a plane fat curve by a fat conic spline. Moreover, the fitting error between the ruled surface and the cone spline can be estimated explicitly via fat conic spline fitting. An efficient fitting algorithm is also proposed for fat conic spline fitting with controllable tolerances. Several examples about approximation of general developable surfaces or other types of ruled surfaces by cone spline surfaces are presented. q 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.