GSoC/GCI Archive
Google Code-in 2013 BRL-CAD

Implement/Integrate surface area function for triangle mesh (BoT) geometry

completed by: Johannes Schulte

mentors: Daniel Rossberg

This task involves implementing or integrating work from last year's GCI into a tested and working change to BRL-CAD.  Here is the prior relevant work:

  • http://www.google-melange.com/gci/task/view/google/gci2012/7968224
  • http://www.google-melange.com/gci/task/view/google/gci2012/8088204

Ensure that the function that was implemented in those tasks are properly hooked into the LIBRT callback table and into our MGED analyze command.  MGED is BRL-CAD's geometry editor.  The analyze command reports a slew of information about primitive objects including aspects like surface area, volume, centroid, and more.  This probably amounts to adding just one or two lines, if any at all (it may already be enabled), and there are lots of examples to follow if you do need to add it.

Verify and validate that the surface area is correct by creating a simple BoT with specific known dimensions and demonstrating that the analyze command reports that value.  The "make box arb8" command will create a simple arb8 box (named 'box') for you and the "facetize box.bot box" command will turn it into a BoT for you (named "box.bot").  The "analyze box.bot" command will evaluate the BoT.  The "adjust box.bot mode plate" will convert the box.bot from being a volume mesh to being a double-sided plate-mode (like sheet metal) mesh.  You can toggle back and forth from plate and volume to test.

Submit you changes as a single patch file, see http://brlcad.org/wiki/Patches for help.  Also submit output from the analyze command (text) showing that it worked.