Premium
A Unified, Object‐Oriented Graphics System and Software Architecture for Visualising CAD/CAM Presentations
Author(s) -
Kochhar Sandeep,
Hall Jim
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
computer graphics forum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.578
H-Index - 120
eISSN - 1467-8659
pISSN - 0167-7055
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8659.1540229
Subject(s) - computer science , rendering (computer graphics) , graphics , computer graphics , animation , cad , computer graphics (images) , scientific visualization , architecture , 3d computer graphics , software rendering , presentation (obstetrics) , graphics pipeline , human–computer interaction , engineering drawing , engineering , medicine , art , visual arts , radiology
Most object‐oriented graphics systems (OOGS) either support general purpose graphics capabilities (drawing editors, ray tracing, etc.), or have targeted specific areas of computer graphics, for example, interface building, animation, and visualisation. However, the key concept in CAD/CAM graphics systems is that of presentations —pictures that convey information about products or parts of products. CAD/CAM graphics systems that create and manipulate presentations have specific graphical requirements that have not been addressed by existing OOGS. These requirements include the support of CAD/CAM concepts such as drawings, views and view‐specific graphics, and layers, and the ability to allow external geometric modelers to be linked into the presentation. We describe an object‐oriented presentation architecture that allows the application to describe the structure of the CAD/CAM presentation. This architecture provides a unified interface to drawings, views, layers and entities, and allows linkage to models created with an external geometric modeler, while isolating applications from details of the underlying traditional graphics rendering systems. It is our hope that this architecture provide the foundation for the architecture of next generation OOGS. We also present an implementation of this architecture and compare it to other OOGS.