N-sided patches with B-spline boundaries

We present a method for constructing an n-sided patch of parametric surface, with n greater than 2. The main property of the resulting patch is that its boundary coincides with a B-spline. Thus, it can easily be connected to given B-spline surfaces with fixed continuity conditions.

The patch is built from a star-shaped input mesh that outlines a generic n-hole and a surface in a vicinity of the hole. The main advantages of the method are the following: continuity conditions of arbitrary order k can be imposed; the mesh involved can have an arbitrary number of sides and an arbitrary shape (convex or not); the simplicity of the construction process makes it an easy and flexible method; and finally, the surface near the boundary is a B-spline with piecewise uniform knot sequences and whose control points are vertices of the mesh (both knot sequences and control points are easily computed). We give implementation details for evaluating a surface point and show that the de Boor algorithm can be exploited for efficiency.