Abstract: This paper presents a method for determining a priori a constant parameter interval for tessellating a rational curve or surface such that the deviation of the curve or surface from its piecewise linear approximation is within a specified tolerance. The parameter interval is estimated based on information about second-order derivatives in the homogeneous coordinates, instead of using affine coordinates directly. This new step size can be found with roughly the same amount of computation as the step size in Cheng [1992], though it can be proven to always be larger than Cheng's step size. In fact, numerical experiments show the new step is typically orders of magnitude larger than the step size in Cheng [1992]. Furthermore, for rational cubic and quartic curves, the new step size is generally twice as large as the step size found by computing bounds on the Bernstein polynomial coefficients of the second derivatives function.