Re: [Boost-users] NURBS curves/surfaces

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] NURBS curves/surfaces
From: Max (loadcom_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-02-08 23:21:23

Hello Pete

What's in my mind now is quite similar with yours you've mentioned.
:-)

> Hi Max,
> 
> I currently work for a CAD company in the footwear industry and our
> curves/surfaces are implemented using splines from code home-grown in
> the 70s. Manning and/or Ferguson I believe they're called. This is
> making interchange between other CAD applications difficult. If our
> company used NURBS internally it would help.

Thanks for your reply and information.
I hope we could keep touch at this area for this similar interest and needs.

> 
> There is a project called Nurbs++
> (http://sourceforge.net/projects/libnurbs/) but it's not seen any
> activity for almost 7 years. I've looked at the code and it's not the
> best. Header files including .cpp files and other strange stuff.
> Trying to get it compiled and link with it means rewriting a lot of
> the code.

I ever had a closer look at it, too. But as you've said, It's quite old
and odd, and lack of real fuctionalities.

Obviously it is not a qualified candidate. :-)

> 
> There is a commercially available library called NLib available from
> Solid Modeling Solutions (http://www.smlib.com/nlib.html). It's quite
> pricey to buy.
> 

Yes, I've heard of this and tried to get a copy for research, but failed.

> The NURBS Book (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nurbs-Book-Monographs-Visual-
> Communication/dp/3540615458/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=12340914
> 19&sr=8-1)
> contains a lot of maths and pseudocode for NURBS algorithms. These
> algorithms are what NLib is based upon, but the latest NLib has more
> functionality I understand. The authors of this book are the original
> authors of NLib before Solid Modeling Solutions bought the rights to
> the library.
> 

I've skimmed through this book some time before, and found it's fairly good.

But the same prolem is that it's also a little bit aged without update.

> Currently the book is far beyond me mathematically! I'm making a real
> effort to learn maths so implementing the algorithms from the book
> might be a good exercise. Then again it might be something I will
> never finish.
> 

:-)
Yes, it has lot of math stuff, even though not so hard. most are
algorithmatic.

> Have you done much research on what's available? Would be interested
> in hearing what paths you're looking at taking.
> 

I have wide range of CAD applications of geom stuff, esp. NURBS. But all of
them
are not of commercial nature - just leisure research and experiment. Then I
have 
never focused on this topic for a long time, just keeping an eye on the
available 
resources, on web especially.

Another stuff I think may worth a closer look is OpenCASCADE. It seems to
contain some NURBS functionally. One difficulty is that this package is TOO
TOO large in size. That means you need much more time to get familiar with 
it.
You can easily get the link for downloading it by Google. The latest version
,open source, is 6.3.0.

> Regards,
> 
> Pete

B/Rgds
Max