• SMS Announces Subdivision Surface Library - SDLib
• SMLib Utilized in Knowledge Base Development
• Solid Modeling Solutions to exhibit at Siggraph

Solid Modeling Solutions (SMS) is pleased to announce a major new capability in collaboration with SurfQuake, Inc., the company recently formed by Michael Lounsbery. Subdivision surface capabilities will be offered in SDLib, a new library that provides a powerful means of creating and editing complex shapes.

SDLib will at first be available as a standalone library that reads a polygonal shape and outputs a subdivision surface, polygonal mesh, or NURBS representation. A later version of SDLib will fully integrate with SMLib, providing full NURBS-based functionality. SDLib will be provided as C++ source code, and will be priced on a subscription license basis without royalties.

SDLib subdivision surfaces provide a hierarchical approach for modeling smooth surfaces of any topology. Taking as input a polygon-based framework, and supporting increasing levels of detail as needed, subdivision surfaces give the user the freedom to easily create a smooth yet detailed surface through local editing and crease definition.

Subdivision surfaces created within SDLib allow access to faces, edges, and vertices at every detail level. SDLib operations on these surface features include adjacency queries, surface evaluation, hierarchy traversal, crease definition, iteration, and support for STL.

SDLib's tessellation of the surface produces a watertight polygonal mesh representation. Alternately, control vertices at any level may be fed back as input to SDLib, enabling topological changes at finer levels. Other tessellation capabilities are planned. SDLib can also produce a closely approximating NURBS representation of the subdivision surface, fully compatible with SMS NURBS libraries.

Additional details on SDLib can be found at the SMS website at www.smlib.com/sdlib.html.

GDL/GWL (General-purpose Declarative Language and Generative Web Language) is a Knowledge Base development environment that features an integrated web server-based user interface. GDL/GWL provides a complete environment for the development of business and engineering applications, covering areas traditionally serviced by specialized KBE (Knowledge-based Engineering), ERP (Enterprise Resource Management),and CRM (Customer Relations Management) software packages.

GDL/GWL integrates business and engineering logic, databases (through ODBC and a direct MySQL interface), and generative geometry, through its library of 3D geometric objects and tight integration to SMS's SMLib NURBS surface and solid modeling libraries. It can display graphics representing the geometry through any standard web browser, with no requirements for plugins, Java or Javascript (with their associated version incompatibilities). It can integrate with relational databases using a single simple unified object-oriented language, seamlessly integrated with GDL, both for defining tables and accessing/updating tables.

GDL/GWL follows a demand-driven, non-procedural paradigm for application development and execution. This gives it all the convenience of a spreadsheet tool like Excel, with all the power of a full-blown native machine compiled object-oriented programming language.

GDL/GWL allows the application developer to describe what should be displayed on each of its dynamically generated web pages (both graphical/geometry elements as well as text/numerical elements contained in any standard HTML markup), and the runtime language automatically keeps track of what internal data elements have to be updated (recomputed), and when. GDL can also output various standard document formats such as PDF, VRML, CAD data formats such as Iges, and RenderMan Interface Bytecode (RIB) (currently under development).

David Cooper Jr., founder of Genworks International, chose SMLib as the geometry kernel for GDL because he believes that its ease of use, value, excellent technical support, and independence from major CAD vendors sets it apart from other available options. "Building all these NURBS Surface and Solids capabilities into GDL in-house would have taken an unthinkable amount of development resources." He says. "I was able to integrate GDL, a Common Lisp application, with SMLib with a small group of core developers. Once we made the decision to move ahead with SMLib, we had an initial robust integration up and running in a matter of weeks. From both the business and technical perspectives, it is difficult to imagine another geometry kernel which would have enabled us to get off the ground so quickly with NURBS capabilities.

Cooper chose SMLib because it offered source code availability, comprehensive features, and excellent technical and sales support. He also liked the platform portability of the SMLib source code. "SMLib provides a big advantage over other alternatives, where we would have to rely on the vendor to provide properly compiled libraries to work with GDL's Lisp environment on all the computer platforms we support such as Windows, Linux, and Unix."

SMLib also makes GDL/GWL significantly more powerful and versatilethan its competition in the KBE and configurator market. Many configurator engines do not support sophisticated engineering or geometry at all, and many higher-end KBE systems are CAD-specific, and rely on a session of a particular CAD system to be up and running for a KBE application to function.

Genworks International is based in Birmingham, Michigan. For more information about Genworks and the GDL/GWL product line, please visit http://www.genworks.com.

SMS will be at booth 962 at the SIGGRAPH 2004 exhibition in Los Angeles. The conference at the Los Angeles Exhibition Center runs from August 8-12, and the exhibition runs August 10-12. If you plan on attending, please stop by the booth. If you need a guest pass to the exhibits, please contact us at sales@smlib.com.

From the staff of Solid Modeling Solutions

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