In this paper we present a new framework, based on subdivision surface fitting, for high rate compression and coding of 3D models. Our algorithm fits the input 3D model, represented by a polygonal mesh, with a piecewise smooth subdivision surface represented by a coarse control polyhedron. Our fitting scheme, particularly suited for meshes issued from mechanical or CAD parts, aims at getting close to the optimality in terms of control points number, while remaining independent of the connectivity of the input mesh. The found subdivision control polyhedron is much more compact than the original mesh and visually represents the same shape after several subdivision steps, without artifacts or cracks, like traditional lossy compression schemes. This control polyhedron is then encoded specifically to give the final compressed stream. Experiments conducted on several 3D models have proven the coherency and the efficiency of our framework, compared with existing compression methods.