RENDERING TECHNIQUES FOR COMPUTER-AIDED-DESIGN

The world of computer-aided design (CAD) is rapidly being transformed During the 1980s CAD gained prominence as a comprehensive production tool. During the 1990s, CAD will move off the page and into the third dimension. As this takes place, the visualization of these 3-D environments becomes a critical issue. This article provides a conceptual explanation of the various computer graphic rendering techniques that have been developed in the past decade and discusses the relevance of these techniques to the future evolution of 3-D CAD tools.