BOOLE, release 1.0

BOOLE is now available for free download. [tarred and gzipped, 1MB]

Un-zip the file with a command such as

gunzip boole-1.0.tar.gz
tar xf boole-1.0.tar
    
BOOLE 1.0 is known to compile and run in the following environments: and we expect compilation problems to be minimal under other environments.

Send mail to geom@cs.unc.edu with questions, comments, and bug reports.

The documentation of BOOLE is very much a work in progress. If you mail us a question, we will likely include the answer in the docs. The latest versions of the doc files are available separately for browsing here. Note especially the copyright.

We have released BOOLE in library form, with an example program that links to the library and performs a simple CSG operation. Routines are included to read and write a standard (albeit proprietary) file format for solids made of trimmed Bezier patches. Soon, we hope to be able to release our viewer which can read these files and display the solids interactively. (The viewer will likely be released as a binary, to be run on an SGI system.)

Two cones Their difference

The BOOLE library includes a fragment of example code which computes the difference of two (truncated) cones. Here are rendered images of this boolean operation. On the left, the two cones (cone1 and cone2) are rendered together on the screen. On the right, their difference, as computed by BOOLE. The rendering is by our own trimmed NURBS viewer.