Object-Oriented Paradigms for Graphical-Object Modeling in Computer-Aided Design: A Survey and Analysis

Making graphical-object modeling the task of creating graphical objects easier is one of the most important challenges facing the CAD and computer graphics community. To make the modeling task easier, many researchers have focused on object-oriented techniques, and over the last decade or so, several object-oriented graphics paradigms have been examined, with the goal of bringing established benefits of object technology reusability, extensibility and maintainability to graphical object modeling. However, while the term "object-oriented graphics" is widely used, the paradigms developed by researchers differ widely in terms of the domains to which they are applicable, the tasks that they are meant to simplify, the amount of extensibility they offer, and the relationships they have to other subsystems in a large graphics application. I provide a comparative description of the approaches used for object-oriented graphical modeling, especially in the context of CAD applications since these place the heaviest demands on graphical-object modeling capabilities. This work serves two purposes: 1.) to provide a conceptual framework for comparing existing paradigms, and 2.) provide an analysis of a few key systems, that can help the practitioner choose among the set of existing paradigms in specific application scenarios. eR categories and subject descriptors: 1.3.5 Computational Geometry and Object Modeling; 1.3.6 Methodology and Techniques; l.3 .m Object-oriented Graphics ; D. I.5 Programming Techniques Object-oriented Programming; 1.6 ComputerAided Design (CAD). Additional