Streamline modeling based on potential flow

Streamline modeling is a design methodology of fair free form surfaces where the tangent vectors are specified/manipulated to generate/deform them instead of the control points of the traditional surface representations (K.T. Miura et al., 1998). Creations and deformations of complex 3D free form shapes generally require a large amount of labour and cost. Therefore, the authors propose a novel modeling technique based on of fluid flow dynamics in order to create and deform high-quality surfaces more intuitively with a smaller number of parameters based on the streamline modeling. We construct a flow field based on the potential flow, then calculate tangent vectors in the flow field that are required for the streamline modeling. Streamlines are generated by numerically integrating the tangent vectors, then the surface is represented as a set of streamlines. The deformation of the surface is performed by changing of the flow field. We have developed a prototype design system using the new modeling technique.