Geometry & Analysis: Thesis Projects Spring 1998: Further developement of SURFAN

The SURFAN project started in the summer of 1997 as a collaboration between Chalmers Dept. of Mathematics, the University of South Carolina and Summus Ltd. a US based image analysis company.

Its purpose was to create a platform of computer programs to deal with 3D CAD applications, 3D visualization, graphics applications, discrete geometry, triangulation, graph theory, 2D image analysis, wavelet analysis and compression.

In the first phase, that was completed in the summer of 97, we implemented file I/O in IGES, which is the industry standard for CAD and data types and classes for the manipulation and visualization of 3D NURBS objects in OPEN GL and LEDA.

The programming was done on Silicon Graphics computers, that utilized special graphics hardware.

• The first step in the second phase of the project will thus be to port the code to a platform independent form. To begin with we want the code to run on SUN stations.
• Moreover the IGES file I/O must be completed and a robust NURBS library (which is a project of its own) must be incorporated in the code.
• An interface standard must be set in a clean and object oriented fashion, such that other projects/programs can use and interact with all other parts of SURFAN.
• Three other existing codes (past projects dealing with curve flows, cellular automata and lattice gas computations) are then to be incorporated into SURFAN.

The aim is thus to make SURFAN a highly open program package, to be used as a testbed and a standard for future projects at the Math dept.