In solid modeling and computer-aided design, boundary representation—often abbreviated as B-rep or BREP—is a method for representing shapes using the limits. A solid is represented as a collection of connected surface elements, the boundary between solid and non-solid.
Boundary representation of models are composed of two parts: topology and geometry (surfaces, curves and points). The main topological items are: faces, edges and vertices. A face is a bounded portion of a surface; an edge is a bounded piece of a curve and a vertex lies at a point. Other elements are the shell (a set of connected faces), the loop (a circuit of edges bounding a face) and loop-edge links (also known as winged edge links or half-edges) which are used to create the edge circuits. The edges are like the edges of a table, bounding a surface portion.
Compared to the constructive solid geometry (CSG) representation, which uses only primitive objects and Boolean operations to combine them, boundary representation is more flexible and has a much richer operation set. In addition to the Boolean operations, B-rep has extrusion (or sweeping), chamfer, blending, drafting, shelling, tweaking and other operations which make use of these.
The CATProduct file format is associated with CATIA V5 assembly format and is used to simulate industrial design processes.
Unlike CATPart files, CATProduct does not contain any geometric information, only model parts, and assembly structure information. Nevertheless, single CATPart files can be generated from CATProduct assembly.
The CATPart extension is compatible with Autodesk Inventor / Fusion 360, and Okino Computer PolyTrans software.
A CAD file is an output of a CAD software, containing key information about the designed object: its geometry and topology representation, 3D model hierarchy, metadata, and visual attributes depending on the format of the file.
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