CGAL 5.3 released

Changelog

General changes

• The support for the compiled version of CGAL is dropped. Only the header-only version is supported.

• On Windows, the type used for Exact_rational, in Epick and indirectly (through Lazy_exact_nt) Epeck may now be boost::multiprecision::mpq_rational, as has been the case on other platforms for several releases. This depends on various options and is added to a list that includes mpq_class, CGAL::Gmpq, leda_rational and CGAL::Quotient<CGAL::MP_Float>.

Quadtrees, Octrees, and Orthtrees (new package)

• This package implements a tree data structure in which each node encloses a hypercubic section of space and each non-leave node has hypercubic children whose edge lengths are half its edge length. Such a data structure is known as a quadtree in 2D, an octree in 3D, and is generalized as an “orthtree” in higher dimensions.

Triangulations on the Sphere (new package)

• This package enables the construction and manipulation of Delaunay triangulations on the 2-sphere. Triangulations are built incrementally and can be modified by insertion or removal of vertices. Point location querying and primitives to build the dual Voronoi diagram are provided.

File Input / Output

• Point set, polygon soup, and polygon mesh file I/O functions have been harmonized and documented:
  • Point set I/O functions can be found in the packages Point_set_processing_3, and Point_set_3.
  • Polygon mesh I/O functions can be found in the package BGL.
  • Polygon soup I/O can be found in the package Stream_support.

A comprehensive list of the supported file formats is available in the Stream_support package here; inversely, the following page can be used to find out which CGAL data structures can be used given a specific file format.

Requirements

• The CMake minimal version is now 3.14.
• The GNU compiler g++ versions 6 and 7 are no longer tested. Only version 8.3 or later are supported

2D and 3D Linear Geometry Kernel

• Added is_translation(), is_scaling(), is_reflection(), and is_rotation() to the classes Aff_transformation_2 and Aff_transformation_3, which enable determining if the transformations use a specialized representation internally.

2D Regularized Boolean Set-Operations

• Added documentation for the free functions oriented_side(const Point_2& p, ....) that accept a point and a polygon.
• Documentation has been improved across the whole package.

Polygon Mesh Processing

• Added the class CGAL::Polyhedral_envelope, providing a way to quickly check if a primitive (point, segment, or triangle) is within a polyhedral envelope around a set of triangles. It is based on the work of Bolun Wang, Teseo Schneider, Yixin Hu, Marco Attene, and Daniele Panozzo. “Exact and efficient polyhedral envelope containment check.” (ACM Trans. Graph., 39-4, July 2020).
• Added more functions in the visitor of the corefinement based methods to track all edge creations.

Surface Mesh Topology

• Added the function CGAL::Surface_mesh_topology::Curves_on_surface_topology::is_homotopic_to_simple_cycle(), which can be used to determine whehter a closed path on a surface mesh can be continously transformed to a cycle without self intersection.

Surface Mesh Simplification

• Added a filtering mechanism so that costly tests get only applied to the next candidate for the edge collapse.
• Added the class Polyhedral_envelope_filter, which enables to perform mesh simplification inside a polyhedral envelope of the input mesh.

2D Polyline Simplification

• When polylines have common subsequences of vertices, these subsequences may now be simplifified simultaneously.

dD Triangulations

• Added the function insert_if_in_star() to the class CGAL::Regular_triangulation, which enables users to insert a point p in a regular triangulation on the condition that p appears post-insertion in the star of a user-specified, existing vertex.

2D and 3D Alpha Shapes

• Breaking change: The following deprecated classes have been removed: Alpha_shape_euclidean_traits_2, Weighted_alpha_shape_euclidean_traits_2, Alpha_shape_euclidean_traits_3, and Weighted_alpha_shape_euclidean_traits_3. All CGAL kernel can be used directly as models of the concepts of the 2D and 3D Alpha Shape packages.

Classification

• Breaking change: the support for TensorFlow has been dropped; the classifier CGAL::TensorFlow::Neural_network_classifier has been removed.