The Priority Tree, a HL/HSR Approach for PHIGS

The Programmer's Hierarchical Interactive Grahics System (PHIGS) specifies an interface for programming device-independent computer graphics applications. PHIGS provides a powerful data grouping mechanism, called the PHIGS structure, that may be used to model the geometry of 3D objects. Hidden Line/Hidden Surface Removal (HL/HSR) is a required process to produce realistic solid views of the modeled objects. Modeling clip is an essential process for viewing a clipped portion of the modeled objects. A technique is presented that provides HL/HSR and modeling clip as added utilities to PHIGS. The technique is based on the Binary Space Partitioning (BSP) tree (sometimes called priority tree), and involves a back to front sorting of the primitives of a PHIGS structure network to another PHIGS structure. Modeling clip is achieved by limiting the sorting to those primitives in a specified clip ping region of the object space. The resulting structure when displayed on a raster device produces a realistic view of the possibly clipped object that was originally modeled by the PHIGS structure network.