Representing Curves and Surfaces in B-Rep Solid Modelers

Solid Modeling and Geometric Modeling are fields of research that grew separately. However, the technological necessity is pressuring in a direction such that both technologies are going to fuse in only one. In this paper we discuss how this fusion can be possible. The basic concepts are the same; however, the geometrical information (curves and surfaces) will be understood as an attribute of the topological primitives (face, edge and vertex). Through this approach it will be possible to have a polyhedral representation when necessary (for example, visualization and mass property calculation algorithms) and to have the curved representation when necessary. It was noticed that the solid represented according curved representation spends less memory.