Converting triangular Bezier surface into optimal trimmed tensor-product Bezier surface

Triangular Bezier surface is widely used for modelling complex object. However most of geometric modelling systems do not support it. It is necessary to convert it into tensor-product Bezier surface. In this paper, a new conversion algorithm is proposed to convert a triangular Bezier surface into an optimal trimmed tensor-product Bezier surface by using polynomial interpolation. Then the proposed algorithm is compared with previous algorithms in both computational cost and numerical accuracy. The results show that the proposed algorithm has both computational and storage advantages over previous algorithms. Its numerical accuracy is comparable with the previous ones for cases of the degree less than 6.