Generalisations
The idea of an envelope of a family of smooth submanifolds follows naturally. In general, if we have a family of submanifolds with codimension c then we need to have at least a c-parameter family of such submanifolds. For example: a one-parameter family of curves in three-space (c = 2) does not, generically, have an envelope.
Read more about this topic: Envelope (mathematics)