'''[http://brlcad.org/%|%BRL-CAD]''', originally by
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Muuss%|%Mike Muuss], is a powerful
cross-platform [open source%|%open-source] [CAD]/solid-modeling system that featues
interactive geometry editing, high-performance ray-tracing for rendering and
geometric analysis, image and signal-processing tools, a system performance
analysis benchmark suite, libraries for robust geometric representation, with
more than 20 years of active development.

[http://brlcad.org/gallery/var/resizes/screenshots/MGED.jpg]


** News **

   2013-12-16:   BRL-CAD selected as a participant in [http://www.google-melange.com/gci/homepage/google/gci2013%|%Google Code-In 2013]



** Description **

To provide for the construction of realistic models of complex objects from a
ralttively small set of "primitive shapes", BRL-CAD employs the basic Boolean
operations of union, subtraction, and intersection, and assigns reals-world
material attributes.

The '''Multi-Device Geometry Editor''', comprised of over 100K lines of
application logic in [Tcl]/[Tk]/[incr Tcl%|%Itcl]/[incr Tk%|%Itk]/[Iwidgets],
is the heart of BRL-CAD, and its [GUI] is the primary user interface to the
system.  It calls into Tcl from [C] for nearly all tasks, including [Event Processing%|%event handling], [logging], [I/O], and other operations.  Both the large red window
and the smaller rendering window have graphics contexts implemented via [Tk C
API], with the larger one providing a custom interactive [3D Graphics%|%3D] environment using Tk
[Pixmap] and the smaller displaying an asynchronous incrementally rendered (ray
traced) 2D image using Tk_PhotoImageBlock.  There’s also dozens of
complex/custom dialogs, windows, and other elements not shown. [http://wiki.tcl.tk/17805#pagetocad1fdaa5%|%1].



** History **

Since 1979, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory has been developing and distributing the BRL-CAD constructive solid geometry (CSG) modeling package for a wide range of military and industrial applications. The package includes a large collection of tools and utilities including an interactive geometry editor, raytracing and generic framebuffer libraries, a network-distributed image-processing and saignal-processing capability, and an '''embedded scripting language'''.



** References **

   1:   [http://code.activestate.com/lists/tcl-mac/1918/%|%MACTCL: Aqua MGED on Mac OS X], Christopher Sean Morrison, 2015-06-19

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