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Recently, I started to develop some codes that use NURBS (general things I intend to use/already using: spline generation, interpolation, grids, isolines, closest-point find, and many others), both for curves and surfaces.

The first practical problem I want to solve is to find a NURBS surface given a set of B-splines (Bezier patches, etc) in 3-D.

In one of the classic books about B-splines, L. Piegl and W. Tiller, The NURBS Book, Springer, 1995, Chapter 10 "Advanced Surface Construction techniques" describes a lot of computational algorithms, possibly including the ones I need (judging by the intro paragraph). However, I definitely do not want to invent the bicycle and would like to re-use as much as I can (provided the library development is not completely dead and has some userbase). I have no intention to write yet another NURBS library.

Right now, I am using openNURBS as a basic IO and storage format, but this library supports only very basic operations – and I am very reluctant to go into "full Rhino mode" to get access to the required functionality.

I already looked into:

  • SISL, not entirely sure how I feel about the GNU license in this particular case.
  • libnurbs++ or libnurbs++ GitHub, the development seems to have stopped at least in 2013, possibly 2011.
  • Nurbana, the development seemed to stop in 2003 (!)
  • verb, that I doubt I am the target audience of.
  • and several other projects that lack any sort of documentation/development/user base.

So, I wonder, what are right now the common grounds for integrating NURBS-related calculations into your codes? Is there a widely used library that I missed (being relatively new to this topic)?

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    $\begingroup$ I am not very familiar with the topic. But have you checked OpenCascade? $\endgroup$
    – nicoguaro ♦
    Jun 25 '18 at 22:15
  • $\begingroup$ @nicoguaro That’s one of the things I am looking into now. It’s just such a beast, I am reluctant to settle for it until I hear from other people with similar needs or I don’t have other more specific options. But that is a very good point, nicoguaro. $\endgroup$
    – Anton Menshov ♦
    Jun 26 '18 at 10:43
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    $\begingroup$ I would also check microelly's work on NURBS for FreeCAD (github.com/microelly2/freecad-nurbs), according to his demos in YouTube it seems useful. $\endgroup$
    – nicoguaro ♦
    Jun 26 '18 at 16:45
  • $\begingroup$ @nicoguaro you want to briefly summarize OpenCascade + looking into FreeCAD's way of dealing with OpenCASCADE / NURBS as an answer? Don't want the bounty go to waste, and I think OpenCascade is the way to go... $\endgroup$
    – Anton Menshov ♦
    Jun 30 '18 at 1:24
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    $\begingroup$ @nicoguaro actually, I have not! thanks for the link, I have to take a very close look at it. $\endgroup$
    – Anton Menshov ♦
    Sep 19 '19 at 2:10
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I think that you should take a look to OpenCascade. It provides with Spline surfaces, and NURBS particularly. It is written in C++ and it is released under LGPL license.

Regarding FreeCAD, I don't think that they officially support NURBS, although you can import them (?). But there is a module in development (see also the Forum). The developer has published several examples already.

I would also suggest to look at Blender since it also supports NURBS.

Both, FreeCAD and Blender have rich Python API, that might be useful if you are a Python user.

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