Section: New Results

Software

CGAL

Two major new releases of cgal , versions 3.8 and 3.9, have been been made available in 2011. These releases contain the following new features, involving Geometrica researchers:

• Generator. In release 3.8, the package Generator has been extended to provide various point set generators in dimensions higher than 3. It can generate random point sets in/on a sphere, in a cube, and points on a grid [40] .

• Spatial sorting. Spatial sorting allows to order a set of points to improve the efficiency of incremental randomized algorithms. The spatial sorting package was existing in previous releases, and has been extended to dimensions higher than 3 in release 3.9 [39] .

• 3D Mesh Generation. The mesh generation package was introduced in cgal 3.5. From release cgal 3.6, the package offers, after Delaunay refinement, an optional optimization step to either improve the global mesh quality or get rid of slivers. Release cgal 3.7 includes an interactive demo based on Qt and the code has been optimized for efficiency. Release 3.8 and further [38] offer the possibility to preserve sharp features such as creases and corners when provided in the description of the input domain.

The new release also contains new packages implemented by our cgal partners and improvements to some existing packages: a detailed list can be found on the cgal web site.

Two one-week cgal developers meetings take place each year. The last one, organized in September at INRIA Sophia Antipolis by Mariette Yvinec, gathered 20 participants.