BRL-CAD 7.12.2 Released

With a few minor updates, bug fixes, and tweaks, the 7.12.2 release is now available. Contrary to the 7.12.0 release notes, we're *actually* finally providing an updated installer for Windows (really .. it's already uploaded!). With much thanks and appreciation, we now have a new and improved installer for BRL-CAD on Windows due to the efforts of Jonathan Bonomo. There are also useful enhancements to RT, RTAREA, and MGED's clone and saveview commands among other enhancements.

The new BRL-CAD for Windows installer is generated by a tool called NSIS that has several advantages over the previous installer. The biggest advantage is that this installer does not require superuser/administrator privileges nor registry access. It can be installed anywhere a user has access to write to greatly simplifying installation while becoming even more flexible.

The release also adds a new '-k' option to RT that will automatically perform a cutaway view on the object specified without the user needing to subtract geometry from the model itself. This addition by John Anderson is a great addition for generating renderings and diagrams that expose the interior detail of a model.

Since the 7.12.0 release, the following significant user-visible changes have occurred:

* new pinewood boxcar example geometry database
* add mk_arb5, mk_arb6 and mk_arb7 to libwdb
* added xclone command to mged for xpushed deep copies
* fixed clone infinite loop for combinations
* wrap mged resource paths with spaces
* new -k 'cutaway view' option added to rt
* improved mged classic mode display manager selection
* fixed mged crash when getting forms of sketch objects
* new -u units option added to rtarea
* added uniform binary object creation to mged GUI
* added e, l, o, i options to mged saveview command

Special thanks to all of the BRL-CAD developers and other individuals that contributed to this release including John Anderson, Sean Morrison, Erik Greenwald, Bob Parker, Daniel Roßberg, Ed Davisson, Cliff Yapp, and Elena Bautu

See http://brlcad.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/brlcad/brlcad/trunk/NEWS for the full list of changes for each release.

BRL-CAD is a powerful constructive solid geometry solid modeling system that includes an interactive geometry editor, ray tracing support for rendering and geometric analysis, path-tracing for realistic image synthesis, network distributed framebuffer support, image and signal-processing tools.

Please visit the Sourceforge project website to download the latest version: http://sf.net/projects/brlcad
See the BRL-CAD website at http://brlcad.org for more information.