[Axiom-developer] exporting plots and other geometry information

[Martin Baker]

I don't know if anyone is interested but I have written code to write the 
contents of a SubSpace domain to a Wavefront .OBJ file. If you are interested 
I have put the code with some documentation an instructions here:

http://www.euclideanspace.com/maths/standards/program/mycode/graph/write/

While doing this I found the Axiom documentation a bit lacking in some areas 
(I needed to understand SubSpace, ThreeSpace and so on) so while I was doing 
this I took the opportunity to make some notes on existing axiom geometry 
related structures and put my notes here:
http://www.euclideanspace.com/maths/standards/program/mycode/graph/existing/

I also have various issues, questions and so on about the more general issues 
of working with geometry in axiom here:

http://www.euclideanspace.com/maths/standards/program/mycode/graph/

The motivation is to:

    * Export plots (with scales, axes, and so on) into a dedicated 3D editors 
(such as 'blender').
    * define and transform shapes using Clifford algebra as well as usual 
Matrix methods.
    * I also find it very helpful to be able to visualise the algebraic 
structures and I want to find better ways to do this.
    * define shapes and show union and intersection (join and meet)
    * slice through shapes and show sections.
    * show scales and grids
    * combine many graphs in one view
    * add annotations in 3D view.
    * Use structures that can be extended to n-dimensions and are not specific 
to 2 or 3(+ 1 for colour) dimensions.

As one example of the issues on this page : I would like to be able to export 
to a X3D file - which is more complicated and standards based than a Wavefront 
file since this can do things like text, lines and colour which would be 
useful for drawing scales etc. There seem to be many structures in axiom to 
implement Open Inventor (IVNodeCategory, RenderTools, IVSimpleInnerNode, 
IVSeparator, IVGroup, IVCoordinate3, IVQuadMesh, IVIndexedLineSet, 
IVUtilities). Would it be feasible to adapt this to support X3D?

Martin Baker