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