BRL-CAD Description Information =============================== Included below are descriptions of and information about BRL-CAD that may be useful as a broad overview to the project or for when preparing materials for informational websites, software distribution sites, package management systems, release announcement materials, and more. TABLE OF CONTENTS ----------------- Introduction Table of Contents History Project Name Internet Resources Keywords & Categories Mission Community Overview Terse Description (70 characters or less) Short Description (255 characters or less) Brief Description (512 characters or less) Whole Description HISTORY ------- "The future exists first in the imagination, then in the will, then in reality." - Mike Muuss BRL-CAD was originally conceived and predominantly written by the late Michael John Muuss. He is the original primary architect and author. The package was improved upon over the years by Mike and the Advanced Computer Systems Team at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, as well as by many other collaborators around the world. Today, the package continues to be developed as an internationally distributed open source project. The initial architecture and design of BRL-CAD began in 1979. Development as a unified package began in 1983. The first public release was made in 1984. BRL-CAD became an open source project on December 21, 2004. PROJECT NAME ------------ The proper name of the project is "BRL-CAD", with specific importance to spell the name in uppercase and utilizing a hyphen. The "BRL-CAD" name should be used for all materials that will be publicly displayed or published. While it is acceptable to use the non-hyphenated and lowercase "brlcad" name for files and directories that refer to the package, e.g. brlcad-7.8.2.tar.gz will compile and install into the /usr/brlcad directory by default, the "BRL-CAD" name should be used as the official name of the project wherever possible unless technical limitations prohibit it. Unacceptable variations of the project name include BRLCAD, BrlCAD, BrlCad, Brlcad, BRLcad, BrlCAD, Brl-CAD, Brl-Cad, Brl-cad, etc. Incorrect albeit perhaps humorous mispronunciations overheard include "burl cad", "burly cad", "brill cad", "brail cad", just "be are el" and other variations without the "cad" designation, and of course "brazilian real canadian dollars". BRL-CAD is correctly pronounced as "be are el cad". The origins of the project name "BRL-CAD" comes from the computer-aided design (CAD) software package's origins at the U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL). BRL was later renamed and reorganized into the U.S. Army Research Laboratory to reflect the diverse technological and scientific research being conducted at the laboratory. The project name continues to this day with the BRL designation as a matter of historic heritage and associated trademark name recognition. INTERNET RESOURCES ------------------ Main Website: http://brlcad.org/ Website Mirror: http://ftp.brlcad.org/ Sourceforge Project Site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/brlcad/ Freshmeat Entry: http://freshmeat.net/projects/BRL-CAD/ Commercial Support: http://brlcad.com/ Bug Reports: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=105292&atid=640802 Feature Requests: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=105292&atid=640805 Support Requests: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=105292&atid=640803 Patch Contributions: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=105292&atid=640804 Internet Relay Chat: irc://irc.freenode.net/brlcad i.e. #brlcad on the Freenode network Mailing Lists: http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=105292 Forums: http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=105292 SVN Access: http://sourceforge.net/svn/?group_id=105292 KEYWORDS & CATEGORIES --------------------- computer assisted design (CAD), solid modeling, 3D modeling, rendering, ray-tracing, constructive solid geometry (CSG), graphics, image manipulation, graphics conversion, geometry conversion, scientific computing, engineering analysis, visualization, high-performance computing, benchmark, framebuffer, signal-processing, symmetric multiprocessing Languages: C, Tcl, and POSIX UNIX Shell Predominantly an ISO/ANSI C code heavily utilizing Tcl/Tk for the predominant interactive solid modeler. Includes C++ and Java native interface bindings to a subset of the provided ray-trace and geometry representation facilities. Includes a PHP geometry server interface. MISSION ------- BRL-CAD's open source development is persistently and passionately obsessed with implementing a robust, powerful, flexible, and comprehensive solid modeling system that provides faithful high-performance geometric representation, efficient and intuitive geometry editing, conversion support for all common solid geometry formats, and geometric analysis tools for 3D computer-aided design (CAD). COMMUNITY OVERVIEW ------------------ BRL-CAD is developed by a collective of open source contributors all around the world. Over the project's lifetime, there have been more than 65 direct committing contributors to BRL-CAD and many more indirect contributors and supporters. BRL-CAD has been an open source project since 2004 expanding and accelerating development ever since. TERSE DESCRIPTION (70-char) ----------------- BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform open source solid modeling system SHORT DESCRIPTION (256-char) ----------------- BRL-CAD is a powerful open source constructive solid geometry solid modeling system that includes interactive geometry editing, ray-tracing for rendering & geometric analyses, network distributed framebuffer support, image & signal-processing tools. BRIEF DESCRIPTION (512-char) ----------------- BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform open source combinatorial Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) solid modeling system that includes interactive solid geometry editing, ray-tracing support for rendering and geometric analysis, network-distributed framebuffer support, image and signal-processing tools, path-tracing support for realistic image synthesis, a system performance analysis benchmark suite, an embedded scripting interface, and a robust high-performance geometric representation and analysis library. LONG DESCRIPTION (2000 char) ---------------- BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform Open Source combinatorial Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) solid modeling system that includes interactive 3D solid geometry editing, high-performance ray-tracing support for rendering and geometric analysis, network-distributed framebuffer support, image and signal-processing tools, path-tracing and photon mapping support for realistic image synthesis, a system performance analysis benchmark suite, an embedded scripting interface, and libraries for robust high-performance geometric representation and analysis. For more than 20 years, BRL-CAD has been the primary tri-service solid modeling CAD system used by the U.S. military to model weapons systems for vulnerability and lethality analyses. The solid modeling system is frequently used in a wide range of military, academic, and industrial applications including in the design and analysis of vehicles, mechanical parts, and architecture. The package has also been used in radiation dose planning, medical visualization, computer graphics education, CSG concepts and modeling education, and system performance benchmark testing among other purposes. BRL-CAD supports a great variety of geometric representations including an extensive set of traditional CSG primitive implicit solids such as boxes, ellipsoids, cones, and tori, as well as explicit solids made from closed collections of Uniform B-Spline Surfaces, Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline (NURBS) surfaces, n-Manifold Geometry (NMG), and purely faceted mesh geometry. All geometric objects may be combined using boolean set-theoretic CSG operations such as union, intersection, and difference. Actively developed since 1979, BRL-CAD is a collection of more than 400 tools, utilities, and applications comprising more than a million lines of source code. It's actively developed for many operating systems including BSD, IRIX, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Windows, and more. WHOLE DESCRIPTION ----------------- BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform Open Source combinatorial Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) solid modeling system that includes interactive 3D solid geometry editing, high-performance ray-tracing support for rendering and geometric analysis, network-distributed framebuffer support, image and signal-processing tools, path-tracing and photon mapping support for realistic image synthesis, a system performance analysis benchmark suite, an embedded scripting interface, and libraries for robust high-performance geometric representation and analysis. For more than 20 years, BRL-CAD has been the primary tri-service solid modeling CAD system used by the U.S. military to model weapons systems for vulnerability and lethality analyses. The solid modeling system is frequently used in a wide range of military, academic, and industrial applications including in the design and analysis of vehicles, mechanical parts, and architecture. The package has also been used in radiation dose planning, medical visualization, computer graphics education, CSG concepts and modeling education, and system performance benchmark testing among other purposes. BRL-CAD supports a great variety of geometric representations including an extensive set of traditional CSG primitive implicit solids such as boxes, ellipsoids, cones, and tori, as well as explicit solids made from closed collections of Uniform B-Spline Surfaces, Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline (NURBS) surfaces, n-Manifold Geometry (NMG), and purely faceted mesh geometry. All geometric objects may be combined using boolean set-theoretic CSG operations including union, intersection, and difference. BRL-CAD has been under active development with a portability heritage that includes systems such as a DEC VAX-11/780 running 4.3 BSD; DECStations running ULTRIX; Silicon Graphics 3030, 4D "IRIS", O2, Onyx, and Origin systems running various versions of IRIX; Sun Microsystems Sun-3 and Sun-4 Sparcs running SunOS; the Cray 1, Cray X-MP, Cray Y-MP, and Cray 2 running UNICOS; DEC Alpha AXP running OSF/1; Apple Macintosh II running A/UX; iPSC/860 Hypercube running NX/2; the Alliant FX/8, FX/80, and FX/2800; Gould/Encore SEL PowerNode 6000/9000 and NP1; NeXT workstations; IBM RS/6000; HPPA 9000/700 running HPUX; Ardent/Stardent; Encore Multi-Max; and much more. BRL-CAD is a collection of more than 400 tools, utilities, and applications comprising more than a million lines of source code. The package is intentionally designed to be extensively cross-platform and is actively developed on and maintained for many common operating system environments including for BSD, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, and Windows among others. BRL-CAD is distributed in binary and source code form as free open source software (FOSS), provided under Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved license terms. Mike Muuss began the initial architecture and design of BRL-CAD back in 1979. Development as a unified package began in 1983. The first public release was made in 1984. BRL-CAD became an open source project on December 21, 2004, with portions licensed under the LGPL and BSD licenses.