A method is presented for partitioning a set of surface estimates obtained with a laser range finding system into subsets corresponding to parts of an object. The authors' strategy uses two complementary representations for surfaces, i.e., one which describes local structures in terms of differential properties (e.g., edges, lines, contours) and another which represents the surface as a collection of smooth patches at different scales. By enforcing a consistent interpretation between these two representations, it is possible to derive a partitioning algorithm that is both efficient and robust.>