The project's goal is three-fold: (i) To create a new software library, CGAL, that is easily usable and forms the basis for the transfer of algorithmic results in computational geometry to industry and sciences. (ii) To cooperate with industrial partners on the use of CGAL in their specific application domains. (ii) To perform theoretical and experimental research on implementation aspects of geometric algorithms. There is a first release (CGAL 0.9) of the software library available under
http://www.cgal.org/.ETH contributes primarily to the following packages of the project. (Note that the initial focus was on the design of the library, the collection of test suites etc.)
(1) Design and implementation of the basic kernel with the most commonly used geometric primitives and operations.
(2) Implementation and research on basic geometric optimization problems (e.g. smallest enclosing disk or ellipsis of a set of points, largest k-gon in a convex polygon etc.).
(3) Design and implementation of data structures for geometric queries as they are needed in geographic information systems. Specification (in cooperation with academic and industrial partners) of data structures and algorithms to be included for the GIS application domain. Collection of a representative set of cartographic maps in vector and raster format that can be used for experiments. Specification of file format.
(4) Collection and statistical analysis of polyhedral data for our implementations for applications like object-space hidden surface removal and surface reconstruction.
