Computational geometry

In computer science, computational geometry is the study of algorithms to solve problems stated in terms of geometry. Some purely geometrical problems arise out of the study of computational geometric algorithms, and the study of such problems is also considered to be part of computational geometry.

Related Topics:
Computer science - Geometry

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The main driving force for the development of computational geometry as a discipline was progress in computer graphics, computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM), but many problems in computational geometry are classical in nature.

Related Topics:
Computer graphics - CAD - CAM

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Other important "customers" of computational geometry include robotics (motion planning and visibility problems), geographic information systems (GIS) (geometrical location and search, route planning), integrated circuit design (IC geometry design and verification), computer-aided engineering (CAE) (programming of numerically controlled (NC) machines).

Related Topics:
Robotics - Geographic information system - GIS - Integrated circuit

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There are two main flavors of computational geometry:

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• Combinatorial computational geometry, also called algorithmic geometry, which deals with geometric objects as discrete entities.
• Numerical geometry, also called machine geometry, computer-aided geometric design (CAGD), or geometric modeling which deals primarily with representation of real-world objects in form suitable for computer computations in CAD /CAM systems.

Often, the latter kind of computational geometry is considered to be branch of computer graphics and/or CAD, and the former one is called simply computational geometry.

Related Topics:
Computer graphics - CAD

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Computational geometry: Combinatorial computational geometry ►