Using CGAL in VS2005

The project

To start my geometry class project, which needs to create the skin surface of given sets of weighted points and deform the skin surface from one shape to another.

Main steps in this project are:

1. Generate the weighted Delaunay Triangulation, which in CGAL is called regular Delaunay Triangulation;

2. Generate the corresponding Voronoi Diagram;

3. Calculate the mixed cells, also called mixed complex, based on the first two results;

4. For each mixed complex, calculate the skin curve equation;

5. Visualize the skin curve, this step is planned to be done with OpenGL.

Set up the environment

1. Install boost (http://www.boost.org/users/download/)

2. Install CGAL (http://www.cgal.org/download.html) Note: During the installation process, it will popup windows asking for whether to install some other library, as I have no idea about whether they are needed or not, I installed all which really cost a large amount of time.

3. After that we can use it in VS2005. First create a Win32 console application and set the VS2005 environment.

4. From Tools->Options, open the Options Dialogue and select the Projects and Solutions –> VC++ Directories.

5. Select Include files, add

[CGAL directory]/include

[boost directory]/boost_[version number]

[CGAL directory]/include/CGAL/config/msvc

[CGAL directory]/auxiliary/gmp/include

6. Select Library files, add

[CGAL directory]/lib

[boost directory]/boost_[version number]/libs

[CGAL directory]/auxiliary/gmp/lib

7. Select Source files, add

[CGAL directory]/src

 

Till now, at least on my computer the code using CGAL libraries can be built. Next is to test whether it works well or not and then use it in my project. But I found the very first thing is to get known the input file format of data!