TEX has always been regarded as the most elegant and powerful system for computer typesetting. However, its widespread use, beyond academia, was hampered by its complexity. Recently, fairly good TEX implementations have come out for PCs putting TEX on the desks of many people: writers, designers, desktop publishers, engineers, and consequently, the interest in TEX has surged. What is needed at this point is a book that teaches step-by-step how to use TEX, illustrating each step by meaningful examples. This is exactly what S.v. Bechtolsheim's book does. It is a tutorial and guide for the...

State of the Art in Computer Graphics Aspects of Visualization This is the fourth volume derived from a State of . . . the Art in Computer Graphics Summer Institute. It represents a snapshot of a number of topics in computer graphics, topics which include visualization of scientific data; modeling; some aspects of visualization in virtual reality; and hardware architectures for visu- alization. Many papers first present a background introduction to the topic, followed by discussion of current work in the topic. The volume is thus equally suitable for nonspecialists in a particular area, and...

Today one of the hardest parts of computer aided design or analysis is first modeling the design, then recording and verifying it. For example, a typical vehicle such as a tank, automobile, ship or aircraft might be composed of tens of thousands of individual parts. Many of these parts are composed of cylinders, flats, and simple conic curves and surfaces such as are amenable to modeling using a constructive solid geometry (CSG) approach. However, especially with the increasing use of composite materials, many parts are designed using sculp- tured surfaces. A marriage of these two techniques...

In the third paper in this chapter, Mike Pratt provides an historical intro- duction to solid modeling. He presents the development of the three most freqently used techniques: cellular subdivision, constructive solid modeling and boundary representation. Although each of these techniques devel- oped more or less independently, today the designer's needs dictate that a successful system allows access to all of these methods. For example, sculptured surfaces are generally represented using a boundary represen- tation. However, the design of a complex vehicle generally dictates that a...

Today one of the hardest parts of computer aided design or analysis is first modeling the design, then recording and verifying it. For example, a typical vehicle such as a tank, automobile, ship or aircraft might be composed of tens of thousands of individual parts. Many of these parts are composed of cylinders, flats, and simple conic curves and surfaces such as are amenable to modeling using a constructive solid geometry (CSG) approach. However, especially with the increasing use of composite materials, many parts are designed using sculp- tured surfaces. A marriage of these two techniques...

In the third paper in this chapter, Mike Pratt provides an historical intro- duction to solid modeling. He presents the development of the three most freqently used techniques: cellular subdivision, constructive solid modeling and boundary representation. Although each of these techniques devel- oped more or less independently, today the designer's needs dictate that a successful system allows access to all of these methods. For example, sculptured surfaces are generally represented using a boundary represen- tation. However, the design of a complex vehicle generally dictates that a...

Reviews 8 key areas which are focal points for current de- velopments. Theseare Design, Modeling, Image Generatiion, Workstations, VLSI, HCI, Graphics Standards, and Electronic Documentation.

State of the Art in Computer Graphics Aspects of Visualization This is the fourth volume derived from a State of . . . the Art in Computer Graphics Summer Institute. It represents a snapshot of a number of topics in computer graphics, topics which include visualization of scientific data; modeling; some aspects of visualization in virtual reality; and hardware architectures for visu- alization. Many papers first present a background introduction to the topic, followed by discussion of current work in the topic. The volume is thus equally suitable for nonspecialists in a particular area, and...