"Fossies" - the Fresh Open Source Software Archive 
Member "brlcad-7.32.4/doc/description.txt" (29 Jul 2021, 11433 Bytes) of package /linux/misc/brlcad-7.32.4.tar.bz2:
As a special service "Fossies" has tried to format the requested text file into HTML format (style:
standard) with prefixed line numbers.
Alternatively you can here
view or
download the uninterpreted source code file.
1 BRL-CAD Description Information
2 ===============================
3
4 Included below are descriptions of and information about BRL-CAD that
5 may be useful as a broad overview to the project or for when preparing
6 materials for informational websites, software distribution sites,
7 package management systems, release announcement materials, and more.
8
9
10 TABLE OF CONTENTS
11 -----------------
12 Introduction
13 Table of Contents
14 History
15 Project Name
16 Internet Resources
17 Keywords & Categories
18 Mission
19 Community Overview
20 Terse Description (70 characters or less)
21 Short Description (255 characters or less)
22 Brief Description (512 characters or less)
23 Whole Description
24
25
26 HISTORY
27 -------
28
29 "The future exists first in the imagination,
30 then in the will, then in reality."
31 - Mike Muuss
32
33 BRL-CAD was originally conceived and predominantly written by the late
34 Michael John Muuss. He is the original primary architect and author.
35 The package was improved upon over the years by Mike and the Advanced
36 Computer Systems Team at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, as well as
37 by many other collaborators around the world. Today, the package
38 continues to be developed as an internationally distributed open
39 source project.
40
41 The initial architecture and design of BRL-CAD began in 1979.
42 Development as a unified package began in 1983. The first public
43 release was made in 1984. BRL-CAD became an open source project on
44 December 21, 2004.
45
46
47 PROJECT NAME
48 ------------
49
50 The proper name of the project is "BRL-CAD", with specific importance
51 to spell the name in uppercase and utilizing a hyphen. The "BRL-CAD"
52 name should be used for all materials that will be publicly displayed
53 or published.
54
55 While it is acceptable to use the non-hyphenated and lowercase
56 "brlcad" name for files and directories that refer to the package,
57 e.g. brlcad-7.8.2.tar.gz will compile and install into the /usr/brlcad
58 directory by default, the "BRL-CAD" name should be used as the
59 official name of the project wherever possible unless technical
60 limitations prohibit it.
61
62 Unacceptable variations of the project name include BRLCAD, BrlCAD,
63 BrlCad, Brlcad, BRLcad, BrlCAD, Brl-CAD, Brl-Cad, Brl-cad, etc.
64
65 Incorrect albeit perhaps humorous mispronunciations overheard include
66 "burl cad", "burly cad", "brill cad", "brail cad", just "be are el"
67 and other variations without the "cad" designation, and of course
68 "brazilian real canadian dollars".
69
70 BRL-CAD is correctly pronounced as "be are el cad".
71
72 The origins of the project name "BRL-CAD" comes from the
73 computer-aided design (CAD) software package's origins at the
74 U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL). BRL was later renamed
75 and reorganized into the U.S. Army Research Laboratory to reflect the
76 diverse technological and scientific research being conducted at the
77 laboratory. The project name continues to this day with the BRL
78 designation as a matter of historic heritage and associated trademark
79 name recognition.
80
81
82 INTERNET RESOURCES
83 ------------------
84
85 Main Website: http://brlcad.org/
86 Website Mirror: http://ftp.brlcad.org/
87 Sourceforge Project Site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/brlcad/
88 Freshmeat Entry: http://freshmeat.net/projects/BRL-CAD/
89 Commercial Support: http://brlcad.com/
90
91 Bug Reports: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=105292&atid=640802
92 Feature Requests: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=105292&atid=640805
93 Support Requests: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=105292&atid=640803
94 Patch Contributions: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=105292&atid=640804
95
96 Internet Relay Chat: irc://irc.freenode.net/brlcad i.e. #brlcad on the Freenode network
97 Mailing Lists: http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=105292
98 Forums: http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=105292
99 SVN Access: http://sourceforge.net/svn/?group_id=105292
100
101
102 KEYWORDS & CATEGORIES
103 ---------------------
104
105 computer assisted design (CAD), solid modeling, 3D modeling,
106 rendering, ray-tracing, constructive solid geometry (CSG), graphics,
107 image manipulation, graphics conversion, geometry conversion,
108 scientific computing, engineering analysis, visualization,
109 high-performance computing, benchmark, framebuffer, signal-processing,
110 symmetric multiprocessing
111
112 Languages: C, Tcl, and POSIX UNIX Shell
113
114 Predominantly an ISO/ANSI C code heavily utilizing Tcl/Tk for the
115 predominant interactive solid modeler. Includes C++ and Java native
116 interface bindings to a subset of the provided ray-trace and geometry
117 representation facilities. Includes a PHP geometry server interface.
118
119
120 MISSION
121 -------
122
123 BRL-CAD's open source development is persistently and passionately
124 obsessed with implementing a robust, powerful, flexible, and
125 comprehensive solid modeling system that provides faithful
126 high-performance geometric representation, efficient and intuitive
127 geometry editing, conversion support for all common solid geometry
128 formats, and geometric analysis tools for 3D computer-aided design
129 (CAD).
130
131
132 COMMUNITY OVERVIEW
133 ------------------
134
135 BRL-CAD is developed by a collective of open source contributors all
136 around the world. Over the project's lifetime, there have been more
137 than 65 direct committing contributors to BRL-CAD and many more
138 indirect contributors and supporters. BRL-CAD has been an open source
139 project since 2004 expanding and accelerating development ever since.
140
141
142 TERSE DESCRIPTION (70-char)
143 -----------------
144
145 BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform open source solid modeling system
146
147
148 SHORT DESCRIPTION (256-char)
149 -----------------
150
151 BRL-CAD is a powerful open source constructive solid geometry solid
152 modeling system that includes interactive geometry editing,
153 ray-tracing for rendering & geometric analyses, network distributed
154 framebuffer support, image & signal-processing tools.
155
156
157 BRIEF DESCRIPTION (512-char)
158 -----------------
159
160 BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform open source combinatorial
161 Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) solid modeling system that includes
162 interactive solid geometry editing, ray-tracing support for
163 rendering and geometric analysis, network-distributed framebuffer
164 support, image and signal-processing tools, path-tracing support for
165 realistic image synthesis, a system performance analysis benchmark
166 suite, an embedded scripting interface, and a robust high-performance
167 geometric representation and analysis library.
168
169
170 LONG DESCRIPTION (2000 char)
171 ----------------
172
173 BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform Open Source combinatorial
174 Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) solid modeling system that includes
175 interactive 3D solid geometry editing, high-performance ray-tracing
176 support for rendering and geometric analysis, network-distributed
177 framebuffer support, image and signal-processing tools, path-tracing
178 and photon mapping support for realistic image synthesis, a system
179 performance analysis benchmark suite, an embedded scripting interface,
180 and libraries for robust high-performance geometric representation and
181 analysis.
182
183 For more than 20 years, BRL-CAD has been the primary tri-service solid
184 modeling CAD system used by the U.S. military to model weapons systems
185 for vulnerability and lethality analyses. The solid modeling system
186 is frequently used in a wide range of military, academic, and
187 industrial applications including in the design and analysis of
188 vehicles, mechanical parts, and architecture. The package has also
189 been used in radiation dose planning, medical visualization, computer
190 graphics education, CSG concepts and modeling education, and system
191 performance benchmark testing among other purposes.
192
193 BRL-CAD supports a great variety of geometric representations
194 including an extensive set of traditional CSG primitive implicit
195 solids such as boxes, ellipsoids, cones, and tori, as well as explicit
196 solids made from closed collections of Uniform B-Spline Surfaces,
197 Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline (NURBS) surfaces, n-Manifold Geometry
198 (NMG), and purely faceted mesh geometry. All geometric objects may be
199 combined using boolean set-theoretic CSG operations such as union,
200 intersection, and difference.
201
202 Actively developed since 1979, BRL-CAD is a collection of more than
203 400 tools, utilities, and applications comprising more than a million
204 lines of source code. It's actively developed for many operating
205 systems including BSD, IRIX, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Windows, and
206 more.
207
208
209 WHOLE DESCRIPTION
210 -----------------
211
212 BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform Open Source combinatorial
213 Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) solid modeling system that includes
214 interactive 3D solid geometry editing, high-performance ray-tracing
215 support for rendering and geometric analysis, network-distributed
216 framebuffer support, image and signal-processing tools, path-tracing
217 and photon mapping support for realistic image synthesis, a system
218 performance analysis benchmark suite, an embedded scripting interface,
219 and libraries for robust high-performance geometric representation and
220 analysis.
221
222 For more than 20 years, BRL-CAD has been the primary tri-service solid
223 modeling CAD system used by the U.S. military to model weapons systems
224 for vulnerability and lethality analyses. The solid modeling system
225 is frequently used in a wide range of military, academic, and
226 industrial applications including in the design and analysis of
227 vehicles, mechanical parts, and architecture. The package has also
228 been used in radiation dose planning, medical visualization, computer
229 graphics education, CSG concepts and modeling education, and system
230 performance benchmark testing among other purposes.
231
232 BRL-CAD supports a great variety of geometric representations
233 including an extensive set of traditional CSG primitive implicit
234 solids such as boxes, ellipsoids, cones, and tori, as well as explicit
235 solids made from closed collections of Uniform B-Spline Surfaces,
236 Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline (NURBS) surfaces, n-Manifold Geometry
237 (NMG), and purely faceted mesh geometry. All geometric objects may be
238 combined using boolean set-theoretic CSG operations including union,
239 intersection, and difference.
240
241 BRL-CAD has been under active development with a portability heritage
242 that includes systems such as a DEC VAX-11/780 running 4.3 BSD;
243 DECStations running ULTRIX; Silicon Graphics 3030, 4D "IRIS", O2,
244 Onyx, and Origin systems running various versions of IRIX; Sun
245 Microsystems Sun-3 and Sun-4 Sparcs running SunOS; the Cray 1, Cray
246 X-MP, Cray Y-MP, and Cray 2 running UNICOS; DEC Alpha AXP running
247 OSF/1; Apple Macintosh II running A/UX; iPSC/860 Hypercube running
248 NX/2; the Alliant FX/8, FX/80, and FX/2800; Gould/Encore SEL PowerNode
249 6000/9000 and NP1; NeXT workstations; IBM RS/6000; HPPA 9000/700
250 running HPUX; Ardent/Stardent; Encore Multi-Max; and much more.
251
252 BRL-CAD is a collection of more than 400 tools, utilities, and
253 applications comprising more than a million lines of source code. The
254 package is intentionally designed to be extensively cross-platform and
255 is actively developed on and maintained for many common operating
256 system environments including for BSD, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, and
257 Windows among others. BRL-CAD is distributed in binary and source
258 code form as free open source software (FOSS), provided under Open
259 Source Initiative (OSI) approved license terms.
260
261 Mike Muuss began the initial architecture and design of BRL-CAD back
262 in 1979. Development as a unified package began in 1983. The first
263 public release was made in 1984. BRL-CAD became an open source
264 project on December 21, 2004, with portions licensed under the LGPL
265 and BSD licenses.