An approximation method to circular arcs

Abstract Modern CAD/CAM systems are not able to dispose the circles represented by the implicit equations or the parametric equations with trigonometric function. Parametric (rational) polynomials are used to approximate the circular arcs. A new approximation method by means of quartic Bezier curves is presented to effectively approximate the circular arcs. It is shown that our method provides the approximation of order eight and yields a smaller error than previous methods. By equally spaced subdivision of circular arcs, the curvature continuous spline approximation algorithm of the circular arcs is given.