Re: [Boost-users] Looking for Halfedge or other topologic representation library

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] Looking for Halfedge or other topologic representation library
From: Jeremiah Willcock (jewillco_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-09-02 11:04:29

On Thu, 2 Sep 2010, Lang Stefan wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> While looking for an existing implementation of halfedge data structures
> or similar topological representations of 2-dimensional manifolds I
> found one article pointing to boost:graph. I've checked the
> documentation, but it seem that this library is way to generic/abstract
> for my purpose, and yet seems to miss a number of important functions
> that probably only make sense when working with a topological
> representation of a two-dimensional oriented manifold.
>
> Conceptually, Half-edge data structures would fit my needs very well,
> and I've found several sites with half-done or half-documented
> implemetations. But those that actually had code were either too
> specific to be useful for my purposes, or half of the site couldn't be
> retrieved, probably because the relevant pages are no longer hosted.
>
> So I was wondering, if there is, maybe, another library within boost
> that is dealing more with the topological aspect of graphs, whether or
> not based on boost::graph?
>
> What I am looking for is a topological framework for oriented surfaces
> that lets me retrieve adjacency information regarding faces, edges and
> vertices, disregardful of whether or not the set of surfaces represent
> the full surface of a 3D object or just a part of it. I also need to
> directly navigate between the objects defining the actual 3D points,
> curves, and surfaces, and the corresponding topological objects. But
> that, I hope, is just a minor detail.
>
> I suspect it won't be so hard to implement myself, but building on a
> well-designed library is so much less error prone...

You might want to look at CGAL (<URL:http://www.cgal.org/>).  It can 
interface with Boost.Graph as well.

-- Jeremiah Willcock