

Ask HN: Resources for 3D solid modeling - amatheus

Hello everyone,<p>I'm interested in 3d solid modeling programming. 
Before working as programmer I was a draftsman and used tools such as AutoCAD and 3dsMax mainly to design exhibit booths, and working with these tools I always been curious about developing a tool like these.<p>I've looked for books or other resources on the topic and, while I found some books on 3d topics, like splines and nurbs surfaces (that is - non-solid geometry), I've never found a book that specifically covers 3d modeling. I mean build real solid volumes that have mass, that you can compute volume, do boolean operations with other objects etc.<p>I know there are OpenCascade (a open source modeling library), but I want to study the algorithms and math involved on it, not just use some pre-built objects.
Do you know of any books on the topic or further directions?<p>Thanks, this is my first submission, sorry for the lousy english -- I'm no native speaker.
======
regularfry
The googleable phrase you want is "constructive solid geometry." The wikipedia
page is probably as good a place to start as any, but there are plenty of
other resources that talk about it, mostly from the perspective of ray
equations.

------
maxharris
I'm interested in CSG software that can calculate intersections between
primitives with arbitrary precision (so that error does not accumulate -
suppose that you wanted to use such a library to automatically generate
manufacturable designs from broad geometric constraints - with current CSG
libraries, you'd have to worry about precision, which would make such a
program unwieldy and unreliable.)

I'd like to contact you directly, but I don't think hn has an IM feature.

------
amatheus
constructive solid geometry seems good, but boundary representation looks
better.

I've found some resources: \- an online course on Geometric Modelling

<http://people.bath.ac.uk/ensab/G_mod/FYGM/>

\- a book about boundary representation

[http://www.amazon.com/Boundary-Representation-Modelling-
Tech...](http://www.amazon.com/Boundary-Representation-Modelling-Techniques-
Anthony/dp/1846283124)

I think these will suffice to start.

Thanks for the comments!

