BRL-CAD Description Information
===============================

Included below are descriptions of and information about BRL-CAD that
may be useful as a broad overview to the project or for when preparing
materials for informational websites, software distribution sites,
package management systems, release announcement materials, and more.


TABLE OF CONTENTS
-----------------
  Introduction
  Table of Contents
  History
  Project Name
  Internet Resources
  Keywords & Categories
  Mission
  Community Overview
  Terse Description (70 characters or less)
  Short Description (255 characters or less)
  Brief Description (512 characters or less)
  Whole Description


HISTORY
-------

"The future exists first in the imagination,
then in the will, then in reality."
		- Mike Muuss

BRL-CAD was originally conceived and predominantly written by the late
Michael John Muuss.  He is the original primary architect and author.
The package was improved upon over the years by Mike and the Advanced
Computer Systems Team at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, as well as
by many other collaborators around the world.  Today, the package
continues to be developed as an internationally distributed open
source project.

The initial architecture and design of BRL-CAD began in 1979.
Development as a unified package began in 1983.  The first public
release was made in 1984.  BRL-CAD became an open source project on
December 21, 2004.


PROJECT NAME
------------

The proper name of the project is "BRL-CAD", with specific importance
to spell the name in uppercase and utilizing a hyphen.  The "BRL-CAD"
name should be used for all materials that will be publicly displayed
or published.

While it is acceptable to use the non-hyphenated and lowercase
"brlcad" name for files and directories that refer to the package,
e.g. brlcad-7.8.2.tar.gz will compile and install into the /usr/brlcad
directory by default, the "BRL-CAD" name should be used as the
official name of the project wherever possible unless technical
limitations prohibit it.

Unacceptable variations of the project name include BRLCAD, BrlCAD,
BrlCad, Brlcad, BRLcad, BrlCAD, Brl-CAD, Brl-Cad, Brl-cad, etc.

Incorrect albeit perhaps humorous mispronunciations overheard include
"burl cad", "burly cad", "brill cad", "brail cad", just "be are el"
and other variations without the "cad" designation, and of course
"brazilian real canadian dollars".

BRL-CAD is correctly pronounced as "be are el cad".

The origins of the project name "BRL-CAD" comes from the
computer-aided design (CAD) software package's origins at the
U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL).  BRL was later renamed
and reorganized into the U.S. Army Research Laboratory to reflect the
diverse technological and scientific research being conducted at the
laboratory.  The project name continues to this day with the BRL
designation as a matter of historic heritage and associated trademark
name recognition.


INTERNET RESOURCES
------------------

Main Website: http://brlcad.org/
Website Mirror: http://ftp.brlcad.org/
Sourceforge Project Site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/brlcad/
Freshmeat Entry: http://freshmeat.net/projects/BRL-CAD/
Commercial Support: http://brlcad.com/

Bug Reports: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=105292&atid=640802
Feature Requests: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=105292&atid=640805
Support Requests: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=105292&atid=640803
Patch Contributions: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=105292&atid=640804

Internet Relay Chat: irc://irc.freenode.net/brlcad i.e. #brlcad on the Freenode network
Mailing Lists: http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=105292
Forums: http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=105292
SVN Access: http://sourceforge.net/svn/?group_id=105292


KEYWORDS & CATEGORIES
---------------------

computer assisted design (CAD), solid modeling, 3D modeling,
rendering, ray-tracing, constructive solid geometry (CSG), graphics,
image manipulation, graphics conversion, geometry conversion,
scientific computing, engineering analysis, visualization,
high-performance computing, benchmark, framebuffer, signal-processing,
symmetric multiprocessing

Languages: C, Tcl, and POSIX UNIX Shell

Predominantly an ISO/ANSI C code heavily utilizing Tcl/Tk for the
predominant interactive solid modeler.  Includes C++ and Java native
interface bindings to a subset of the provided ray-trace and geometry
representation facilities.  Includes a PHP geometry server interface.


MISSION
-------

BRL-CAD's open source development is persistently and passionately
obsessed with implementing a robust, powerful, flexible, and
comprehensive solid modeling system that provides faithful
high-performance geometric representation, efficient and intuitive
geometry editing, conversion support for all common solid geometry
formats, and geometric analysis tools for 3D computer-aided design
(CAD).


COMMUNITY OVERVIEW
------------------

BRL-CAD is developed by a collective of open source contributors all
around the world.  Over the project's lifetime, there have been more
than 65 direct committing contributors to BRL-CAD and many more
indirect contributors and supporters.  BRL-CAD has been an open source
project since 2004 expanding and accelerating development ever since.


TERSE DESCRIPTION (70-char)
-----------------

BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform open source solid modeling system


SHORT DESCRIPTION (256-char)
-----------------

BRL-CAD is a powerful open source constructive solid geometry solid
modeling system that includes interactive geometry editing,
ray-tracing for rendering & geometric analyses, network distributed
framebuffer support, image & signal-processing tools.


BRIEF DESCRIPTION (512-char)
-----------------

BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform open source combinatorial
Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) solid modeling system that includes
interactive solid geometry editing, ray-tracing support for
rendering and geometric analysis, network-distributed framebuffer
support, image and signal-processing tools, path-tracing support for
realistic image synthesis, a system performance analysis benchmark
suite, an embedded scripting interface, and a robust high-performance
geometric representation and analysis library.


LONG DESCRIPTION (2000 char)
----------------

BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform Open Source combinatorial
Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) solid modeling system that includes
interactive 3D solid geometry editing, high-performance ray-tracing
support for rendering and geometric analysis, network-distributed
framebuffer support, image and signal-processing tools, path-tracing
and photon mapping support for realistic image synthesis, a system
performance analysis benchmark suite, an embedded scripting interface,
and libraries for robust high-performance geometric representation and
analysis.

For more than 20 years, BRL-CAD has been the primary tri-service solid
modeling CAD system used by the U.S. military to model weapons systems
for vulnerability and lethality analyses.  The solid modeling system
is frequently used in a wide range of military, academic, and
industrial applications including in the design and analysis of
vehicles, mechanical parts, and architecture.  The package has also
been used in radiation dose planning, medical visualization, computer
graphics education, CSG concepts and modeling education, and system
performance benchmark testing among other purposes.

BRL-CAD supports a great variety of geometric representations
including an extensive set of traditional CSG primitive implicit
solids such as boxes, ellipsoids, cones, and tori, as well as explicit
solids made from closed collections of Uniform B-Spline Surfaces,
Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline (NURBS) surfaces, n-Manifold Geometry
(NMG), and purely faceted mesh geometry.  All geometric objects may be
combined using boolean set-theoretic CSG operations such as union,
intersection, and difference.

Actively developed since 1979, BRL-CAD is a collection of more than
400 tools, utilities, and applications comprising more than a million
lines of source code.  It's actively developed for many operating
systems including BSD, IRIX, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Windows, and
more.


WHOLE DESCRIPTION
-----------------

BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform Open Source combinatorial
Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) solid modeling system that includes
interactive 3D solid geometry editing, high-performance ray-tracing
support for rendering and geometric analysis, network-distributed
framebuffer support, image and signal-processing tools, path-tracing
and photon mapping support for realistic image synthesis, a system
performance analysis benchmark suite, an embedded scripting interface,
and libraries for robust high-performance geometric representation and
analysis.

For more than 20 years, BRL-CAD has been the primary tri-service solid
modeling CAD system used by the U.S. military to model weapons systems
for vulnerability and lethality analyses.  The solid modeling system
is frequently used in a wide range of military, academic, and
industrial applications including in the design and analysis of
vehicles, mechanical parts, and architecture.  The package has also
been used in radiation dose planning, medical visualization, computer
graphics education, CSG concepts and modeling education, and system
performance benchmark testing among other purposes.

BRL-CAD supports a great variety of geometric representations
including an extensive set of traditional CSG primitive implicit
solids such as boxes, ellipsoids, cones, and tori, as well as explicit
solids made from closed collections of Uniform B-Spline Surfaces,
Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline (NURBS) surfaces, n-Manifold Geometry
(NMG), and purely faceted mesh geometry.  All geometric objects may be
combined using boolean set-theoretic CSG operations including union,
intersection, and difference.

BRL-CAD has been under active development with a portability heritage
that includes systems such as a DEC VAX-11/780 running 4.3 BSD;
DECStations running ULTRIX; Silicon Graphics 3030, 4D "IRIS", O2,
Onyx, and Origin systems running various versions of IRIX; Sun
Microsystems Sun-3 and Sun-4 Sparcs running SunOS; the Cray 1, Cray
X-MP, Cray Y-MP, and Cray 2 running UNICOS; DEC Alpha AXP running
OSF/1; Apple Macintosh II running A/UX; iPSC/860 Hypercube running
NX/2; the Alliant FX/8, FX/80, and FX/2800; Gould/Encore SEL PowerNode
6000/9000 and NP1; NeXT workstations; IBM RS/6000; HPPA 9000/700
running HPUX; Ardent/Stardent; Encore Multi-Max; and much more.

BRL-CAD is a collection of more than 400 tools, utilities, and
applications comprising more than a million lines of source code.  The
package is intentionally designed to be extensively cross-platform and
is actively developed on and maintained for many common operating
system environments including for BSD, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, and
Windows among others.  BRL-CAD is distributed in binary and source
code form as free open source software (FOSS), provided under Open
Source Initiative (OSI) approved license terms.

Mike Muuss began the initial architecture and design of BRL-CAD back
in 1979.  Development as a unified package began in 1983.  The first
public release was made in 1984.  BRL-CAD became an open source
project on December 21, 2004, with portions licensed under the LGPL
and BSD licenses.
