BRLCAD available on Power Series?

[Mike Muuss]

Let me add to Phils remarks.  First, BRL-CAD works fine on the SGI Power
Series.  The machine on my desk is a Power Series 4D/240.

You may have heard of several current issues between BRL-CAD Release 3.7
and SGI's IRIX Release 3.2 (and 3.2.1 and 3.2.2):

*)  It is necessary to modify a few files in the BRL-CAD Release 3.7
software before beginning compilation.  These changes are listed on the
erratta sheet that is shipped with every tape.  These changes are
necessitated by the fact that SGI IRIX Release 3.2 was not made
available until after BRL-CAD Release 3.7, so there was no way the
BRL-CAD software could have been tested in advance.

*)  When running a parallel application that produces images on the
framebuffer, it is necessary to bounce the image through RFBD, because
SGI has a bug in their graphics library that makes it impossible for a
parallel-processing application to produce graphics output (ugh!).
This is easily accomplished by adding the flag -F127.0.0.1: to such
applications, or setting FB_FILE=127.0.0.1: in advance. I knew of this
problem before the BRL-CAD Release was finalized, and spent several days
trying to develop an internal "fix", but nothing worked. When SGI
promised me that this difficulty would be fixed in IRIX Release 3.2,
I gave up.  However, it was *not* fixed in 3.2, so the problem lingers
on. SGI now claims that IRIX Release 3.3 will have this fixed.  Note
again that this is an SGI libgl bug, not a BRL-CAD bug, not that you
as the user care about the distinction.

Other than these two issues, I believe that BRL-CAD Release 3.7 is a good,
solid release, and should give you no trouble.

Please pass this information on to your "sources".  If you have any questions,
please feel free to drop me a line.

	Best,
	 -Mike

- - - - -

For those wondering what BRL-CAD is, here is a quick summary.

The BRL-CAD Package includes a powerful solid modeling capability and
a network-distributed image-processing capability. This software is now
running at over 600 sites. BRL-CAD started in 1979 as a task to provide
an interactive graphics editor for the BRL vehicle-description data
base. Today the package totals more than 150,00 lines of "C" source
code. It runs under UNIX and is supported over more than a dozen product
lines from Sun Workstations to the Cray 2. The package includes:

	A Solid geometric editor
	The Ray tracing library
	Two Lighting models
	Many image-handling, data-comparison, and other supporting utilities

In terms of geometrical representation of data, BRL-CAD supports:

	The original Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) BRL database.

	Extensions to include solids made from collections of 
	Uniform B-Spline Surfaces as well as
	Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline [NURB] Surfaces.

	A facetted data representation.

It supports association of material (and other attribute properties)
with geometry which is critical to subsequent applications codes.
It supports a set of extensible interfaces by means of which geometry
(and attribute data) are passed to applications.

Applications linked to BRL-CAD:

o Weights and Moments-of-Inertia
o Optical Image Generation (including specular/diffuse reflection,
	refraction, and multiple light sources, animation, interference)
o Bistatic laser analysis
o A number of Synthetic Aperture Radar Codes (including codes due to ERIM)
o Acoustic model predictions
o High-Energy Laser Damage
o High-Power Microwave Damage
o An array of V/L Codes
o Neutron Transport Code
o Link to PATRAN [TM] and hence to ADINA, EPIC-2, NASTRAN, etc.
	for structural/stress analysis
o X-Ray calculation