Bézier curves and geological design

Abstract Most structural geologists probably don't think of themselves as designers and yet in practice, their work is directly analogous to that of designers in other fields ranging from high fashion to aircraft manufacture. Structural geology can greatly benefit from design tools that have been developed for microcomputer applications in a variety of other disciplines. Among the most important of these tools are Bezier curves which may be used in forward modelling or reconstruction. The underlying theory of Bezier curves has the potential to revolutionize our treatment of heterogeneous deformation and kinematics in the future, much as tensor algebra radically improved our understanding of homogeneous strain during the past two decades.