[cgma-dev] r3517 - cgm/trunk/itaps

[Steve Jackson]

On Feb 1, 2010, at 17:37 , Jason Kraftcheck wrote:

> Steve Jackson wrote:
>> 
>> On Feb 1, 2010, at 16:08 , James Porter wrote:
>>> 
>>> Would using RefVolumes exclusively be limiting in any way? My
>>> understanding is that a Body is a collection of RefVolumes, but if
>>> that's not helpful (or if in practice, our Bodies only have one
>>> RefVolume), then I think it makes more sense to return RefVolumes
>>> everywhere.
>> 
>> I think it would be a problem for me.  I have code that uses
>> iGeom_uniteEnts(), and currently, this function allows me to unite
>> disjoint volumes into a single EntityHandle.  My code would break if
>> uniteEnts() was required to create a single volume.
> 
> Would it break if iGeom_uniteEnts were changed to pass back the disjoint
> volumes as a list?

It would involve substantial reworking of several functions and the data structures they use, and the new versions would be more complex than the existing ones.  It wouldn't take me more than a few days to fix and re-test everything, but it's hard to be excited about fixing something that isn't presently broken.

That said, I will be the first to admit that the boolean functions in iGeom have unwieldy interfaces, and I would glad to see them respecified to be more consistent.  Your suggestion is probably a worthwhile change to make, particularly if I'm the only one affected.
~S