Pierre Bézier
Encyclopedia
Pierre Étienne Bézier was a French
engineer and one of the founders of the fields of solid, geometric and physical modeling as well as in the field of representing curves, especially in CAD/CAM systems. As an engineer at Renault
, he became a leader in the transformation of design and manufacturing, through mathematics and computing tools, into computer-aided design and three-dimensional modeling.
Bézier patented and popularized, but did not invent the Bézier curve
s and Bézier surface
s that are now used in most computer-aided design
and computer graphics
systems.
, Bézier was the son and grandson of engineers. He obtained a degree in mechanical engineering
from the École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers
in 1930. He earned a second degree in electrical engineering
in 1931 at the École Supérieure d'Électricité, and a doctorate in 1977 in mathematics
from the University of Paris
.
From 1968 to 1979 Bézier was Professor of Production Engineering at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers
.
He wrote four books and numerous papers, and received several distinctions including the Steven Anson Coons
Award from the Association for Computing Machinery
and an honorary doctorate from the Technical University Berlin. He was an honorary member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
and of the Société Belge des Mécaniciens, president of the Société des Ingénieurs et Scientifiques de France, Société des Ingénieurs Arts et Metiers, and one of the first Advisory Editors of Computer-Aided Design magazine.
With his family's consent, the Solid Modeling
Association established The Pierre Bézier Award for Solid, Geometric and Physical Modeling and Applications in 2007.
— using such curves to design automobile
bodies. The curves were first developed in 1959 by Paul de Casteljau
using de Casteljau's algorithm
, a numerically stable
method to evaluate Bézier curves. The curves remain widely used in computer graphics to model smooth curves.
Bézier developed the notation, consisting of nodes with attached control handles, with which the curves are represented in computer software. The control handles define the shape of the curve on either side of the common node, and can be manipulated by the user, via the software.
Bézier curves were adopted as the standard curve of the PostScript
language and subsequently were adopted by vector programs such as Adobe Illustrator
and CorelDraw
. Most outline fonts, including TrueType
and PostScript Type 1, are defined with Bézier curves.
, where he would ultimately develop his UNISURF
CAD CAM
system.
He began his 42-year tenure at Renault as a Tool Setter. In 1934, Bézier became Tool Designer and in 1945 became Head of the Tool Design Office. As Director of Production Engineering in 1949, he designed the "transfer machines" that produced most of the mechanical parts for the Renault 4CV
. The transfer machines were high-performance work tools designed to machine engine blocks. While imprisoned during WWII, Bézier developed and improved on the "automatic machine principle" introduced before the war by General Motors
. The new "transfer station", with multiple workstations and electromagnetic heads (antecedents to robots), enabled different operations on a single part to be consecutively performed by transferring the part from one station to another.
In 1957, Bézier became Director of the Machine Tool Division, responsible for the automatic assembly of mechanical components and for the design and production of numerical control
drilling and milling machines. Bézier began managing technical development at Renault in 1960. He retired from Renault in 1975.
in 1960 while at Renault, focusing on the UNISURF
system he developed for use with drawing machines, computer control, interactive free-form curves, surface design and 3D milling for manufacturing clay models and masters. UNISURF debuted in 1968 and has been in full use since 1975.
In 1985 he was recognized by ACM SIGGRAPH
with a Steven A. Coons Award for his lifetime contribution to computer graphics and interactive techniques.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
engineer and one of the founders of the fields of solid, geometric and physical modeling as well as in the field of representing curves, especially in CAD/CAM systems. As an engineer at Renault
Renault
Renault S.A. is a French automaker producing cars, vans, and in the past, autorail vehicles, trucks, tractors, vans and also buses/coaches. Its alliance with Nissan makes it the world's third largest automaker...
, he became a leader in the transformation of design and manufacturing, through mathematics and computing tools, into computer-aided design and three-dimensional modeling.
Bézier patented and popularized, but did not invent the Bézier curve
Bézier curve
A Bézier curve is a parametric curve frequently used in computer graphics and related fields. Generalizations of Bézier curves to higher dimensions are called Bézier surfaces, of which the Bézier triangle is a special case....
s and Bézier surface
Bézier surface
Bézier surfaces are a species of mathematical spline used in computer graphics, computer-aided design, and finite element modeling.As with the Bézier curve, a Bézier surface is defined by a set of control points...
s that are now used in most computer-aided design
Computer-aided design
Computer-aided design , also known as computer-aided design and drafting , is the use of computer technology for the process of design and design-documentation. Computer Aided Drafting describes the process of drafting with a computer...
and computer graphics
Computer graphics
Computer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer with help from specialized software and hardware....
systems.
Background
Born in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Bézier was the son and grandson of engineers. He obtained a degree in mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering is a discipline of engineering that applies the principles of physics and materials science for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. It is the branch of engineering that involves the production and usage of heat and mechanical power for the...
from the École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers
École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers
Arts et Métiers ParisTech is the French leading engineering school in the fields of mechanics and industrialization.The school trained 85,000 engineers since its foundation in 1780 by the Duke of La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt....
in 1930. He earned a second degree in electrical engineering
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
in 1931 at the École Supérieure d'Électricité, and a doctorate in 1977 in mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
from the University of Paris
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
.
From 1968 to 1979 Bézier was Professor of Production Engineering at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers
Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers
The Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers , or National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts, is a doctoral degree-granting higher education establishment operated by the French government, dedicated to providing education and conducting research for the promotion of science and industry...
.
He wrote four books and numerous papers, and received several distinctions including the Steven Anson Coons
Steven Anson Coons
Steven Anson Coons was an early pioneer in the field of computer graphical methods. He was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Mechanical Engineering Department...
Award from the Association for Computing Machinery
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...
and an honorary doctorate from the Technical University Berlin. He was an honorary member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
American Society of Mechanical Engineers
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers is a professional body, specifically an engineering society, focused on mechanical engineering....
and of the Société Belge des Mécaniciens, president of the Société des Ingénieurs et Scientifiques de France, Société des Ingénieurs Arts et Metiers, and one of the first Advisory Editors of Computer-Aided Design magazine.
With his family's consent, the Solid Modeling
Solid modeling
Solid modeling is a consistent set of principles for mathematical and computer modeling of three dimensional solids. Solid modeling is distinguished from related areas of Geometric modeling and Computer graphics by its emphasis on physical fidelity...
Association established The Pierre Bézier Award for Solid, Geometric and Physical Modeling and Applications in 2007.
Bézier curve
Bézier popularized but did not actually create the Bézier curveBézier curve
A Bézier curve is a parametric curve frequently used in computer graphics and related fields. Generalizations of Bézier curves to higher dimensions are called Bézier surfaces, of which the Bézier triangle is a special case....
— using such curves to design automobile
Automobile
An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...
bodies. The curves were first developed in 1959 by Paul de Casteljau
Paul de Casteljau
Paul de Casteljau is a French physicist and mathematician. In 1959, while working at Citroën, he developed an algorithm for computation of Bézier curves, which would later be formalized and popularized by engineer Pierre Bézier...
using de Casteljau's algorithm
De Casteljau's algorithm
In the mathematical field of numerical analysis, De Casteljau's algorithm is a recursive method to evaluate polynomials in Bernstein form or Bézier curves, named after its inventor Paul de Casteljau...
, a numerically stable
Numerical stability
In the mathematical subfield of numerical analysis, numerical stability is a desirable property of numerical algorithms. The precise definition of stability depends on the context, but it is related to the accuracy of the algorithm....
method to evaluate Bézier curves. The curves remain widely used in computer graphics to model smooth curves.
Bézier developed the notation, consisting of nodes with attached control handles, with which the curves are represented in computer software. The control handles define the shape of the curve on either side of the common node, and can be manipulated by the user, via the software.
Bézier curves were adopted as the standard curve of the PostScript
PostScript
PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...
language and subsequently were adopted by vector programs such as Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe Systems. Illustrator is similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to its competitors, CorelDraw, Xara Designer Pro and Macromedia FreeHand....
and CorelDraw
CorelDRAW
CorelDRAW is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Corel Corporation of Ottawa, Canada. It is also the name of Corel's Graphics Suite...
. Most outline fonts, including TrueType
TrueType
TrueType is an outline font standard originally developed by Apple Computer in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript...
and PostScript Type 1, are defined with Bézier curves.
Renault
From 1933 to 1975 Bézier worked for RenaultRenault
Renault S.A. is a French automaker producing cars, vans, and in the past, autorail vehicles, trucks, tractors, vans and also buses/coaches. Its alliance with Nissan makes it the world's third largest automaker...
, where he would ultimately develop his UNISURF
UNISURF
UNISURF, developed by Pierre Bézier at Renault in 1971, was a pioneering surface CAD CAM system for car body design and tooling....
CAD CAM
Computer-aided manufacturing
Computer-aided manufacturing is the use of computer software to control machine tools and related machinery in the manufacturing of workpieces. This is not the only definition for CAM, but it is the most common; CAM may also refer to the use of a computer to assist in all operations of a...
system.
He began his 42-year tenure at Renault as a Tool Setter. In 1934, Bézier became Tool Designer and in 1945 became Head of the Tool Design Office. As Director of Production Engineering in 1949, he designed the "transfer machines" that produced most of the mechanical parts for the Renault 4CV
Renault 4CV
The Renault 4CV was an economy car produced by the French manufacturer Renault from August 1947-July 1961. The first French car to sell over a million units, the 4CV was ultimately superseded by the Renault Dauphine....
. The transfer machines were high-performance work tools designed to machine engine blocks. While imprisoned during WWII, Bézier developed and improved on the "automatic machine principle" introduced before the war by General Motors
General Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...
. The new "transfer station", with multiple workstations and electromagnetic heads (antecedents to robots), enabled different operations on a single part to be consecutively performed by transferring the part from one station to another.
In 1957, Bézier became Director of the Machine Tool Division, responsible for the automatic assembly of mechanical components and for the design and production of numerical control
Numerical control
Numerical control refers to the automation of machine tools that are operated by abstractly programmed commands encoded on a storage medium, as opposed to controlled manually via handwheels or levers, or mechanically automated via cams alone...
drilling and milling machines. Bézier began managing technical development at Renault in 1960. He retired from Renault in 1975.
CAD
Bézier began researching CAD/Computer-aided manufacturingComputer-aided manufacturing
Computer-aided manufacturing is the use of computer software to control machine tools and related machinery in the manufacturing of workpieces. This is not the only definition for CAM, but it is the most common; CAM may also refer to the use of a computer to assist in all operations of a...
in 1960 while at Renault, focusing on the UNISURF
UNISURF
UNISURF, developed by Pierre Bézier at Renault in 1971, was a pioneering surface CAD CAM system for car body design and tooling....
system he developed for use with drawing machines, computer control, interactive free-form curves, surface design and 3D milling for manufacturing clay models and masters. UNISURF debuted in 1968 and has been in full use since 1975.
In 1985 he was recognized by ACM SIGGRAPH
ACM SIGGRAPH
ACM SIGGRAPH is the New York–based Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. It was founded in 1969 by Andy van Dam ....
with a Steven A. Coons Award for his lifetime contribution to computer graphics and interactive techniques.