A Geometric Reasoning Server with Applications to Geometric Constraint Satisfaction and Configurable Feature Extraction

Geometric Reasoning is at the heart of most CAD/CAM applications. In the study of geometric reasoning, two main areas can be identified: Static Reasoning and Dynamic Reasoning. The first type is concerned with finding the solution to geometric problems where the location and orientation of the geometric entities is fully specified by coordinate values. The second type deals with problems in which the entities are specified by geometric relations or constraints. This paper describes the design and implementation of a static geometric reasoning server. The server was developed as an Application Programming Interface that application developers can use to model and manipulate geometric objects. Examples of two applications that use the server are presented. The first application is a configurable feature definition and recognition system. The second application is the design of a Geometric Constraint Satisfaction (GSF) system that uses the static reasoning capabilities of the server for its lower level geometric operations.