Editing Convert BoT to Pipe

In the design phase of an aircraft, component positions and locations are continually in flux leading to a lag in models of line routing. Typically when lines are received from an aircraft manufacturer to the vulnerability analyst, they may not terminate at the component(s) they were meant to connect to. Therefore, when importing these lines from high-end CAD packages such as Catia or Pro-E into BRL-CAD, they need to be re-routed so that they reflect the aircraft systems accurately and eliminate any overlapping issues. Currently these lines are imported using an intermediate format such as STL, which is a facetted geometry. In BRL-CAD this becomes a "Bag-of-triangles" (BoT) solid which cannot be edited with any efficiency. It is very desirable to be able to import these lines using BRL-CAD native geometry via the pipe solid. Any code developed to accomplish this must perform the following:

- Automatically determine pipe start and end points
- Automatically determine BoT inner and outer diameters
- Successfully traverse the BoT line placing pipe vertices where necessary
- Successfully negotiate line models that have T or Y shaped intersections creating pipe solids for each leg
- Accurately utilize the pipe solid bend radius attribute to limit the number of vertices necessary to create a bend
- Apply a vertex reduction algorithm based on user defined tolerances (angular tolerance to define a straight segment)
- Implement options allowing the automatic generation of a fluid component (fuel or hydraulic fluid within the line)
- Implement options that allow for automatic Boolean operations into both line and fluid Regions