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Curve Collections

A CurveCollection is a an abstract base class for various collection of curves.

There are 5 concrete derived types:

  • Path - curve primitives joining head to tail
  • Loop - curve primitives joining head to tail and closing to form a loop
  • ParityRegion - Loops that bound a planar area by parity rules.
  • UnionRegion - boolean union of areas of Loops and/or ParityRegions

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Path and Loop

Path and Loop are collections for which

  • All members of the collection must be derived from CurvePrimitive, i.e. be one of
  • Successive CurvePrimitive members must match "head to tail".
  • In a Loop, the last member's head must match the first member's tail.
  • Throughout the library, a Loop is expected to be a "filled" planar region.
  • A Path is usually does not return to its start point.
    • If a Path does return to its start point, it is not interpreted as enclosing area. The path is still just a wire that happens to come back to its start.

The immediate base class for both Path and Loop is CurveChain. The CurveChain base class implements various methods that depend on the internal head-to-tail matching but not on the closure of a Loop.

Special Loop properties

  • The purpose of a Loop is to act as the boundary of a planar region.
    • Unless specifically indicated by names or comments for various methods that at on Loops, The containing plane will be determine "on demand" using the FrameBuilder class.
  • A point is "inside" a loop if a line (within the Loop's plane) from the point "to infinity" crosses the loop an odd number of times.
  • The crossing count rule may be applied (and mathematically always produces the same result) for:
    • Any line direction -- horizontal, vertical, or any other direction.
    • Any curved path that starts at the and gets to infinity.

ParityRegion

A ParityRegion is a curve collection whose immediate children are

  • all of type Loop (i.e. array of CurvePrimitive joined head-to-tail both internally an from last to first.
  • all coplanar.

"Inside" and "Outside" of a parity region is determined by the rule commonly called "even/odd", "exclusive or" or "parity":

  • A point is "inside" the parity region if and only if it is classified as "inside" of an odd number of its Loops.
  • A point is "inside" if and only if performing "exclusive or" among the (boolean) "inside" classification of all of its Loops.

In nearly all uses, the various loops in a ParityRegion

  • have no intersections among any pair of loops.
  • have exactly one that can be called outer
  • all other than the outer

UnionRegion

A UnionRegion is a curve collection whose immediate children are

  • limited to the two types Loop and ParityRegion.
  • all coplanar.

"Inside" and "Outside" of a parity region is determined by the boolean "union" or "OR" rule:

  • A point is "inside" the union region if it is "inside" one or more of the members.
  • A point is "inside" if and only if performing "union" among the (boolean) "inside" classification of all of its Loop and ParityRegion.

Tips for Processing CurveCollections

Processing all 5 subtypes of CurveCollection initially appears quite complex. However, within each of the cases of a top level switch statement or sequence of if tests, the number of possibilities drops quickly:

  • A Path or Loop can only contain true CurvePrimitive.
  • A ParityRegion may only contain Loops.
  • A UnionRegion may contain only Loop, ParityRegion, or further UnionRegion.
  • A BagOfCurves is the only one with free mixture of both CurveCollection and CurvePrimitive.

IModelJson Examples

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Last Updated: 30 November, 2023