Brief Description of the CGAL project

The goal of the CGAL Open Source Project is to provide easy access to efficient and reliable geometric algorithms in the form of a C++ library. CGAL is used in various areas needing geometric computation, such as: computer graphics, scientific visualization, computer aided design and modeling, geographic information systems, molecular biology, medical imaging, robotics and motion planning, mesh generation, numerical methods.

The Computational Geometry Algorithms Library (CGAL), offers data structures and algorithms like triangulations (2D constrained triangulations and Delaunay triangulations in 2D and 3D, periodic triangulations in 3D), Voronoi diagrams (for 2D and 3D points, 2D additively weighted Voronoi diagrams, and segment Voronoi diagrams), polygons (Boolean operations, offsets, straight skeleton), polyhedra (Boolean operations), arrangements of curves and their applications (2D and 3D envelopes, Minkowski sums), mesh generation (2D Delaunay mesh generation and 3D surface and volume mesh generation, skin surfaces), geometry processing (surface mesh simplification, subdivision and parameterization, as well as estimation of local differential properties, and approximation of ridges and umbilics), alpha shapes, convex hull algorithms (in 2D, 3D and dD), search structures (kd trees for nearest neighbor search, and range and segment trees), interpolation (natural neighbor interpolation and placement of streamlines), shape analysis, fitting, and distances (smallest enclosing sphere of points or spheres, smallest enclosing ellipsoid of points, principal component analysis), and kinetic data structures.

All these data structures and algorithms operate on geometric objects like points and segments, and perform geometric tests on them. These objects and predicates are regrouped in CGAL Kernels.

Finally, the Support Library offers geometric object generators and spatial sorting functions, as well as a matrix search framework and a solver for linear and quadratic programs. It further offers interfaces to third party software such as the GUI libraries Qt, Geomview, and the Boost Graph Library.

The ICMS 2010 CGAL distribution

Below you may find a listing of the files distributed with the ICMS 2010 software packages DVD (this DVD).

Contents of this directory

Supported Platforms

The platforms supported as of Release 3.6.1 (current release) are:

• GNUg++ 3.4-4.4, under Linux 2.x / MacOS X 10.3+/Solaris 2.6+ and Windows XP/XP64/Vista (with Cygwin)
• MS Visual C++ 8.0 (.NET 2005), 9.0 (.NET 2008), under Windows XP/XP64/Vista
• Intel Compiler 11.0, under Linux 2.x

For more information go to CGAL's Supported Platforms page.

CGAL Releases

The current public release of CGAL is version 3.6.1. Visit CGAL's Release History page for a complete history of the releases of CGAL.

License

Since release 3.0, CGAL is available under an Open Source license as well as a commercial license. Users choosing to use CGAL under the free-of-charge Open Source license have to comply to its terms, otherwise they have to buy a commercial license. For more information on CGAL's licensesing scheme may be found at CGAL's License page.

CGAL Manuals

The ICMS2010 distribution of CGAL offers both the PDF version of the documentation (User and Reference Manual), as well as a browsable version of the html version of the documentation (User and Reference Manual). To access them follow the links below:

At the CGAL Manuals page you may also find the online version of CGAL's User and Reference Manual, CGAL's Installation Manual and CGAL's Developers Manual, as well as links to tutorials and manuals of older versions of CGAL.

Mailing lists

The CGAL project offers a variety of ways for users/developers to communicate: there is a users mailing list/forum, as well as a mailing list to which announcements related to CGAL are posted. For more information about ways to communicate with/within the CGAL project, please refer to CGAL's Mailing Lists page.