Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!sei.cmu.edu!fs7.ece.cmu.edu!o.gp.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!cn09+ From: cn09+@andrew.cmu.edu (Christopher Kalevi Nuuja) Newsgroups: comp.graphics Subject: Re: Scene Description Standard Message-ID: Date: 7 May 91 19:52:31 GMT Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 15 A programmatic approach is sometimes good for keeping the size of files down. A dna model can be represented by a list of A G C and whatever that other letter is, along with a few functions that read that list and create the appropriate primitivies (balls,sticks,letters,etc.) This makes it very easy to alter the way the model is represented (ball+stick,text+stick,space-filling,etc), and its much more compact than explicitly listing each primitive, or even multiply instantiating similiar primitives (need a name, and a location). A progammatic approach allows you to use information from the domain of the model to simplify its encoding. It also makes it easy to create coroegraphy scripts to control rendering animations. You can design whatever function you want to procedurally alter your geometry as time goes by, or load new geometries at appropriate times.