Open CASCADE Technology
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This article relies on references to primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject, rather than references from independent authors and third-party publications. Please add citations from reliable sources. (April 2007) |
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| Developer(s) | OPEN CASCADE S.A.S |
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| Initial release | 1999 |
| Stable release | 6.5.2 / December 12, 2011[1] |
| Written in | C++ |
| Operating system | Linux and Windows |
| Type | CAD, CAM, CAE |
| License | Open CASCADE Technology Public License |
| Website | www.opencascade.org |
Open CASCADE Technology (OCCT) is a software development platform for 3D CAD, CAM, CAE, etc. that is developed and supported by OPEN CASCADE SAS. It is available under the "Open CASCADE Technology Public License" which the developer claims to be "LGPL-like with certain differences". Despite this claim, it is not listed as compatible with the GPL license by the publisher of the LGPL, the Free Software Foundation.[citation needed] The Debian project considers the license to meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines and has accepted Open CASCADE into its main archive [2] after some debate [3].
In March 2011, the wording of the license was subtly changed. From then on, contributors are no more inclined but now advised to send their modifications of the source code back to Open CASCADE S.A.S.[4]
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[edit] History
CAS.CADE (abbreviated from Computer Aided Software for Computer Aided Design and Engineering) was originally developed in the early 90s by Matra Datavision, editor of Euclid CAD software as the underlying infrastructure for its future version Euclid Quantum.
However, in 1998 the company abandoned software development to concentrate on services, and most of the software development facilities were sold to Dassault Systemes, editor of competing CATIA. Next year Matra Datavision decided to publish its CAS.CADE infrastructure under an Open Source model and renamed it Open CASCADE[5].
In 2000 a separate company OPEN CASCADE SAS was created to make business around Open CASCADE[6]. OPEN CASCADE SAS was sold in 2003 to Principia, a French Service Provider corporation, and then in 2006 it was acquired by Euriware Group, a subsidiary of AREVA.
In 2004, software was renamed to Open CASCADE Technology (abbreviated as OCCT) in order to distinguish it from the name of the company itself.
[edit] Object Libraries
- Foundation Classes
- Modeling Data
- Modeling Algorithms
- Visualization
- Application Framework
- Data Exchange
- DRAW
[edit] Workshop Organization Kit (WOK)
WOK (Workshop Organization Kit) is Open CASCADE development environment, which has been designed to allow a large number of developers to work on a product getting advantage of common reference version shared over the local network. Though being rather obsolete, it is still in use in some legacy environments, and in particular is used for production of certified versions of OCCT.
WOK is de-facto a necessity for making substantial changes in OCCT since it is the only tool that provides support for CDL (CAS.CADE definition language), used for declaration of most of OCCT classes and also serving to define logical structure of OCCT libraries. WOK has been included in previous OCCT distributions; since OCCT version 6.4 it is made an independent tool.
[edit] Releases
Open CASCADE S.A.S. provides a public version of the library, which is released sporadically[7]. For example, version 6.3.0 was publicly released in 2008. The next public version was 6.5.0, which was released in early 2011. There are more frequent (maintenance) releases for customers of Open CASCADE S.A.S. All releases are said to become publicly available starting from version 6.5.1[8].
| version | release date | release type | public release |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6.5.2 | 12 December 2011 | maintenance | yes |
| 6.5.1 | 16 June 2011 | maintenance | yes |
| 6.5 | 5 March 2011 | minor | yes |
| 6.4.2 | 18 February 2011 | maintenance | no |
| 6.4.1 | 7 February 2011 | maintenance | no |
| 6.4 | 1 October 2010 | minor | no |
| 6.3.1 | 19 June 2009 | maintenance | no |
| 6.3 | 3 September 2008 | minor | yes |
| 6.2.1 | 6 December 2007 | maintenance | no |
| 6.2 | 19 March 2007 | minor | yes |
| 6.1.1 | 16 October 2006 | maintenance | no |
| 6.1 | 24 March 2006 | minor | yes |
| 5.2.4 | 29 July 2005 | maintenance | no |
| 5.2.3 | 6 May 2005 | maintenance | no |
| 5.2.2 | 24 December 2004 | maintenance | no |
| 5.2.1 | 29 October 2004 | maintenance | no |
| 5.2 | 16 July 2004 | minor | yes |
| 5.1.3 | 23 April 2004 | maintenance | no |
| 5.1.2 | 1 March 2004 | maintenance | no |
| 5.1.1 | 2 December 2003 | maintenance | no |
| 5.1 | 10 October 2003 | minor | yes |
| 5.0.2 | 1 August 2003 | maintenance | no |
| 5.0.1 | 6 June 2003 | maintenance | no |
| 5.0 | 23 May 2003 | major | yes |
[edit] Open CASCADE Community Edition
In March 2011, Thomas Paviot initiated a fork of the then most recent publicly available version 6.5.0 of Open CASCADE library. The initiative is called Open CASCADE Community Edition. The project aims to establish a separate community-based release and bug-report process for the library.[9]
[edit] External links
- Open CASCADE Technology Homepage
- Discussion of Open CASCADE license on Open CASCADE forums (started 25th Feb '09)
- Github repository of the OCE project
- Discussion forum for the OCE project
- Python binding to Open CASCADE library
[edit] References
- ^ Open CASCADE Technology 6.5.2 is available for download!
- ^ Open CASCADE package for Debian GNU/Linux
- ^ debian-legal thread on the Open CASCADE license
- ^ Forum thread in official Open CASCADE forum discussing the change of license wording
- ^ Downloading Of Source Code For Open Cascade Gains Momentum
- ^ European e-Business Market Watch Case Study: Open source-based services by Open CASCADE S.A.
- ^ Official release list for Open CASCADE
- ^ Becoming more and more open!
- ^ Forum thread in official Open CASCADE forum announcing Open CASCADE Community Edition project
