The HOOPS 3D Framework (HOOPS 3DF) consists of an integrated suite of components which enable the rapid development of high-performance design, visualization, and engineering applications. HOOPS 3DF maintains platform independence within each component, providing cross-platform solutions on Windows, UNIX, LINUX and Mac OS X.
The HOOPS 3D Framework consists of the following components:
HOOPS/3dGS provides developers with a high-level, object oriented scene-graph API that encapsulates a graphics database and optimized algorithms for the storage, creation, editing, manipulation, querying, rendering, and printing of 3D and 2D graphical information.
HOOPS/Stream is a FileIO toolkit for the HSF file format. It allows developers to import/export customized HSF files or data streams to/from the HOOPS/3dGS scene graph, or proprietary and third-party graphics systems.
HOOPS/MVO is a set of platform and GUI independent C++ classes that implement much of the common functionality found in CAD/CAM/CAE applications such as model viewing, creation, annotation, manipulation, selection and hardcopy. The classes can be directly embedded into an application and the open source code can be easily extended to build customized application-specific logic. HOOPS/MVO has been designed to cleanly integrate with the various HOOPS/3dAF components.
HOOPS/GUI modules encapsulate the work needed to connect the HOOPS 3DF to several different Graphical User Interface (GUI) toolkits. HOOPS/GUI provides the following integrations:
HOOPS/GM connects the various modelling kernels to the HOOPS 3D Graphics System. HOOPS/GM saves developers the task of designing and implementing the graphical output interfaces that these sophisticated modeling packages require. HOOPS provides integrations for the following geometric modelers:
The HOOPS 3DF Reference Applications are built with the various components of the HOOPS 3D Framework and demonstrate its functionality across the Windows, Mac OS X, UNIX and LINUX platforms. In addition, they provide a model for the base architecture of new applications. Readable source code for the Reference Applications is provided as part of the development system and developers are free to use any part of the code within their application. Here is a list of available reference applications:
The diagram below illustrates how these components are connected to each other and how user generated events flow from the GUI Toolkit to the HOOPS/3dAF.
In the HOOPS 3D Framework, user-generated events are collected by a GUI Tool's event queue. The HOOPS/GUI integration module monitors the event queue and dispatches appropriate events to either the HOOPS/MVO objects, HOOPS/Net client objects, or directly to HOOPS/3dGS. The HOOPS/MVO application objects in turn engage the API of either the geometric modeler, HOOPS/GMB or HOOPS/3dGS itself to interact with the data stored in each component.
HOOPS 3DF is a comprehensive foundation for building a 3D application upon. We would like to acknowledge that many contributed to the making of this suite of products.