A new approach to the surface intersection problem

Planar cut and surface intersection software is an important part of any computer aided design system. This paper presents two new ideas in the numerical solution of such problems. The first is the notion of topology resolution. In this process, the structure of the intersection curves, including the identification of closed interior loops, is determined prior to their actual numerical solution. The second idea is to compute the intersection curves as the numerical solution of a differential algebraic equation, yielding intersection curves which are (nearly) parametrized by arclength.