mbp@lakisis.umd.edu (Mark Phillips) (09/28/89)
I have developed an interactive graphics program for viewing
3-dimensional line drawings that runs under Suntools on Sun
workstations. The program is called 'viewwld' and has been in use in
our department for several months. I plan to distribute it on the
net, but before doing so I would like for several more people out
there to use it and give me some feedback. If you are interested in
obtaining it (in source-code form with instructions for compiling),
you can
1. get it via anonymous ftp from poincare.geom.umn.edu
(128.101.25.31); it's in the pub directory (in the
compressed tar file viewwld.tar.Z; get the CONTENTS file
for instructions).
or
2. send email to me (mbp@lakisis.umd.edu) and I will email it
to you.
Viewwld will read an ascii input file containing a list of line
segments and points in space, and will then display the picture in a
Suntools window which has an interactive control panel for rotating,
zooming in and out, etc. Viewwld is simple in that it only displays
zero- and one-dimensional data --- no shaded or hidden-line images of
surfaces or solids, etc. Because of this simplicity, however, it is
fast and works well for conveying simple to moderately complicated
spatial relationships. It can also create PostScript output, and has
controls for recording and playing back "movies" consisting of
sequences of (up to 30) bitmaps, which gives it an almost real-time
flavor on even the slowest of Suns.
I wrote viewwld on a Sun 3 running SunOS 3.5; I have also tested
it on a Sun 3 running SunOS 4.0. Although I have not tested it on any
Sun 4's, as far as I know it should work on them too. (If not, please
let me know!).
Mark Phillips mbp@lakisis.umd.edu (arpanet)
Department of Mathematics (301) 454-6550
University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland 20742