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There are two reasons why IGES so quickly accepted NURBS. The first was that IGES was in great need of a way to represent objects. Up to that point, there were, for example, only two surface definitions in IGES, and the B-spline form was restricted to cubic splines. The other surprisingly important reason for the rapid acceptance was that Boeing, not a CAD system supplier, was not a threat to any of the major turnkey system vendors. Evidently, IGES easily bogs down when different vendors support their own slightly different representations for the same objects. At this first IGES meeting, it was discovered that the SDRC representatives understood the presentation best. SDRC was also active in defining a single representation for standard CAD curves and was working on a similar definition.
Boehm's B-spline refinement paper from CAD '80 was of primary importance. It enabled the staff to understand non-uniform splines and to appreciate the geometrical nature of the definition so as to use B-splines in solving engineering problems. The first use of the geometrical nature of B-splines was in the curve/curve intersection. The Bezier subdivision process was utilized, and a second use was oura curve offset algorithm, which was based on a polygon offset process that was eventually communicated to and used by SDRC and explained by Tiller and Hanson in their offset paper of 1984. The staff also developed an internal NURBS class taught to about 75 Boeing engineers. The class covered Bezier curves, Bezier to B-spline, and surfaces. The first public presentation of our NURBS work was at a Seattle CASA/SME seminar in March 1982. The staff had progressed quite far by then. They could take a rather simple NURBS surface definition of an aircraft and slice it with a plane surface to generate an interesting outline of some of the wingwings, body, and engines. The staff were allowed great freedom in pursuing our ideas, and Boeing correctly promoted NURBS, but the task of developing that technology into a useable form was too much for Boeing, which abandoned the TIGER task late in '84.
For the record, byBy late 1980, the TIGER Geometry Development Group consisted of Robert Blomgren, Richard Fuhr, George Graf, Peter Kochevar, Eugene Lee, Miriam Lucian, and Richard Rice. Robert Blomgren was "lead engineer".
In 1984, Robert M. Blomgren subsequently formedestablished Applied Geometry in 1984 to commercialize the technology. Subsequently, and Applied Geometry was subsequently purchased by [[Alias Systems Corporation]]/[[Silicon Graphics]] purchased Applied Geometry. Robert Blomgren and Jim Presti formed Solid Modeling Solutions (SMS) was formed in early 1998 by Robert Blomgren and Jim Presti. In late 2001, Nlib was purchased from GeomWare, and the alliance with IntegrityWare was terminated in 2004. Enhancements and major new features are added twice-yearly a year.
SMS software is based on years of research and application of NURBS technology. Les Piegl and Wayne Tiller (a partner of Solid Modeling Solutions) wrote the definitive "The NURBS Book" on non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS), with aids to designing geometry for computer-aided environment applications.<ref>Piegl, Les & Tiller, Wayne. [https://www.amazon.com/NURBS-Book-Monographs-Visual-Communication/dp/3540615458/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1351272003&sr=8-1&keywords=the+nurbs+book ''The NURBS Book''], Springer 1997</ref> The fundamental mathematics is well defined in this book, and the most faithful manifestation in software is implemented in the SMS product line.
== Philosophy ==
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