What is this? f3d (Format 3 Dimensional) is a simple format for storage of 3D datasets supporting different voxel types (8, 16, 32 bit integers, floats) and different grids (cartesian, regular, rectilinear). It does not support curvilinear and unstructured grids. The package includes both basic routines for storage/retrieval of such data into/from a file, as well as some tools for grid manipulation and format conversion. Of course, the list of utilities is imcomplete and all contributions are welcome. What does the package provide? The f3d provides two libraries and a bunch of include files and programs. The libf3d.a and f3d.h should be used if a simple C-like interface to f3d is used. This can be sufficient, if you add the f3d format to some other systems. The libf3d++.a library and other include files implement a simple yet efficient classes for manipulation with volumetric data. What is the purpose of the package? According to my experience with 3D data formats, they either do not exist (I mean, either stacks of 2D slices are used or the data is stored in raw files; both of which are awkward), or are too general and therefore nor easy to be used. My idea was to design something very simple, yet versatile and powerfull. For more detais, see the HTML documentation which can be found in the doc subdirectory. The basic functionality, necessary for manipulation with f3d files is in include/f3d.h and src/f3d.c. Other files provide the user with some more comfort with 3D grid manipulation (e.g., data storage, interpolation or gradient computation). Installation To install the f3d package, it is necessary to have the the 1.1.3 version of zlib (http://www.cdrom.com/pub/infozip/zlib/). To compile the f3d data viewer, wxwindows (http://www.wxwindows.org/) is necessary. See details in the INSTALL file. Copyright The package is covered by two types of linences. The f3d.c and f3d.h.in files are covered by a license, very similar to that of the 'zlib' library. Please, see details in the f3d.h file. The rest is covered by the GPL licence. See details in the COPYING file. Bugs 1. The tools read from standard input and write to standard output. Unfortunately, fseek is not allowed on stdio (at least when tha data come from a program) and therefore an error occurs: "ReadSliceData: Uncompression Error" To avoid it, do not pipe the data from one program to another. It has been beyond my abilities to test all the programs and features. Therefore, the probability of bug occurence is high. Please, send any comments, proposals, demands concerning both correct and faulty behavior of the package to the author, who will try to respond as soon as possible. Author Milos Sramek ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Milos Sramek EMAIL: Milos.Sramek@oeaw.ac.at VISCOM WWW: http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~milos Sonnenfelsgasse 19/2 PHONE: +43 (1) 515 81 / 327 A-1010 Vienna, Austria FAX: +43 (1) 512 89 01 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------