The 3D-shape matching problem plays a crucial role in many applications, such as indexing or modeling, by example. Here, we present a novel approach to matching 3D objects in the presence of nonrigid transformation and partially similar models. In this paper, we use the representation of surfaces by 3D curves extracted around feature points. Indeed, surfaces are represented with a collection of closed curves, and tools from shape analysis of curves are applied to analyze and to compare curves. The belief functions are used to define a global distance between 3D objects. The experimental results obtained on the TOSCA and the SHREC07 data sets show that the system performs efficiently in retrieving similar 3D models.