NMG Editing

N-Manifold Geometries are BRL-CADs primitive for representing generic volumes of geometry bound by flat surfaces. They are more general than BoTs in that they are not restricted to triangles. Neither MGED nor Archer has any significant graphical ability to edit NMG structures directly - they are more typically used during conversion of other CSG primitives to facetized geometry for export.

This task would involve studying the NMG data structure and how best to provide graphical editing capabilities for it in Archer. This should include:

• Ability to select subsets of an NMG via table based interface (see Archer's support for combination editing)
• Ability to add and remove elements of an NMG while still satisfying validity constraints
• Ability to move parts of an NMG interactively
• Visual feedback in the geometry window on which parts are selected

NMGs are complex data structures, and a basic understanding of them will be essential to this task - a proposal on this topic should be detailed enough to demonstrate that understanding.

References

• src/librt/primitives/nmg
• src/tclscripts/archer
• src/tclscripts/mged
• include/nmg.h

• http://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/papers/90nmg/all.ps

Requirements

• Familiarity with C
• Understanding of NMG (see referenced paper above)