Software:CGAL

From HandWiki
Short description: Open-source geometric modelling kernel
CGAL
Developer(s)CGAL Open Source Project
Initial release1996
Stable release
5.6 / 28 July 2023; 11 months ago (2023-07-28) [1]
Written inC++
Operating systemLinux, macOS and Microsoft Windows
TypeLibraries
LicenseLicense
Websitewww.cgal.org

The Computational Geometry Algorithms Library (CGAL) is an open source software library of computational geometry algorithms. While primarily written in C++, Scilab bindings and bindings generated with SWIG (supporting Python and Java for now) are also available.[2][3]

The software is available under dual licensing scheme. When used for other open source software, it is available under open source licenses (LGPL or GPL depending on the component). In other cases commercial license may be purchased, under different options for academic/research and industrial customers.[4]

History

The CGAL project was founded in 1996, as a consortium of eight research institutions in Europe and Israel: Utrecht University, ETH Zurich, Free University of Berlin, INRIA Sophia Antipolis, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Max Planck Institute for Informatics Saarbrücken, Johannes Kepler University Linz, and Tel-Aviv University. The original funding for the project came from the ESPRIT project of the European Union.[5] Originally, its licensing terms allowed its software to be used freely for academic purposes, with commercial licenses available for other uses. CGAL Releases 3.x were distributed under the QPL license. Starting with CGAL 4.0, released in 2012, CGAL is distributed under the GPL version 3. (As of 2013) it is managed by a thirteen-member editorial board, with an additional 30 developers and reviewers.[6]

The project started in 1996 as the pooling of the previous efforts of several project participants:PlaGeo and SpaGeo from Utrecht University, LEDA of the Max-Planck-Institute for Informatics and C++GAL of INRIA Sophia Antipolis. The LEDA library encompasses a broader range of algorithms. A comparison of the two libraries is provided by Kettner and Näher.[7] Three CGAL User workshops held in 2002, 2004, and 2008 highlighted research results related to CGAL,[8] and many additional papers related to CGAL have appeared in other conferences, workshops, and journals.[9]

In 2023 the project won the SoCG Test of Time Award[10]

Scope

The library covers the following topics:


Platforms

The library is supported on a number of platforms:[11]

The CGAL library depends on the Boost libraries, and several CGAL packages on the Eigen C++ library.

See also

References

  1. "Three new CGAL releases". https://www.cgal.org/news/2023/07/28/three_new_releases/. 
  2. CGAL bindings, developed at GeometryFactory.
  3. CGAL Scilab bindings, developed at Scilab and INRIA by Edyta Przymus, Naceur Meskini and Sylvain Pion.
  4. CGAL license
  5. CGAL Project History.
  6. CGAL Project Members.
  7. Kettner, L.; Näher, S. (2004). "Two computational geometry libraries: LEDA and CGAL". pp. 1435–1464. .
  8. CGAL User Workshop program , 2nd CGAL User Workshop program and 3rd CGAL User Workshop program .
  9. (As of 2010), Google scholar lists 137 papers with CGAL in their titles.
  10. https://apps.utdallas.edu/SOCG23/awards.html
  11. CGAL Supported Platforms

External links