1. A system for replacing a direct surface manipulation (DSM) surface with an independent NURBS surface patch of a geometric model comprising: a computer system, wherein said computer system includes a memory, a processor, a user input device and a display device; a computer generated geometric model stored in said memory of said computer system, wherein the geometric model is in a computer-assisted design (CAD) format; and wherein a user using the computer system samples data points of the DSM feature, parameterizes the sampled data points, determines knot vectors for a fitted NURBS surface patch, sets-up an equation system, and solves the equation system for a CAD model.