xcmodel: An aCaDemic system (Q2718092)

xcmodel is an interactive graphic system based on nonuniform rational B-splines with the power of a professional computer aided design (CAD) system, but realized and usuable in an academic environment, i.e. the authors expect the user is a researcher or a student. xcmodel integrates four packages: a 2D and a 3D free from modeller, an object composer and a realistic scene renderer. At present time, the xcmodel system runs on UNIX platforms such as Sun SPARC (Solaris), SGI (Irix), and Intel (Linux), but it is expected that difficulties be minimal under other environments.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINExcmodel has general characteristics, which are unusual for commercial CAD systems. For example, xcmodel allows the user to set up the order of the curve or of the surface to a value of ten, and provides not only some predefined knot vectors but also the case, where the user sets any knot position and multiplicity. At the end some interesting modelling examples are given.