 |
Parasolid XT Format Manual |
|
|
Parasolid XT Format Manual |
This Parasolid Transmit File Format manual describes the formats in which Parasolid represents model information in external files. Parasolid is a geometric modeling kernel that can represent wireframe, surface, solid, cellular and general non-manifold models.
Parasolid stores topological and geometric information defining the shape of models in transmit files. These files have a published format so that applications can have access to Parasolid models without necessarily using the Parasolid kernel. The main audience for this manual are people who intend to write translators from or to the Parasolid transmit format.
Reading and writing transmit files are significantly different problems. Reading is simply a question of traversing the transmit file and interpreting the records stored within it. Writing is a significantly harder process; as well as getting the data format of the transmit file correct applications must also ensure that the many complex and subtle inter-relationships between the geometric nodes in the file are satisfied.
The presentation of material in this manual is structured to help the construction of applications that perform read operations. It is strongly advised that the construction of applications that write files is only attempted when a copy of Parasolid is available during the development process to check the consistency and validity of files being produced.
This manual documents the Parasolid V11.0 transmit file format. This format will change in subsequent Parasolid releases at which time this manual will be updated. As new versions of Parasolid can read and write older transmit file formats these changes will not invalidate applications written based on the information herein.
The Parasolid Transmit File Format manual is published in PDF format, which requires Adobe Acrobat Reader V3 or above for viewing. If you do not already have it installed on your computer, you can find instructions on how to obtain it here.