Ideas for new BRL-CAD contributors
==================================

If you're interested in contributing to BRL-CAD, here is a general
suggested progression of tasks that are intended to help you become
familiar with the project.

* Compile, install, and run BRL-CAD

* Run the BRL-CAD Benchmark

* Go through the modeling tutorials (available on the brlcad.org website)

* Model something real in detail

* Render some pictures using rt and rtedge

* Perform basic geometric analysis using rtarea, rtweight, and gqa

* Write a procedural geometry tool (see examples in src/proc-db)

* Write a tutorial or other documentation on some aspect of BRL-CAD

* Fix one of the bugs listed in the BUGS file

* Fix one of the bugs listed on the bug tracker

* Implement one of the items listed in the TODO file

* Implement one of the items listed on the request for enhancements tracker

--
There are lots of possible non-coding tasks:

* Write documentation
* Improve the website
* Offer to help with art and design
* Engage in discussions
* Write design docs
* Update roadmap
* Answer questions, be helpful
* Give a presentation on some topic

---
There may be more tasks and ideas available in the Tasks section of
the project website at
http://sourceforge.net/pm/task.php?group_project_id=35563&group_id=105292

There may be more ideas available at:
http://brlcad.org/~sean/ideas.html


Major Domains
-------------
CAD
Solid Modeling
CADD
CAE
CAM/MCAD
Ray-tracing
Modeling ("content creation", non-solid)
FEM

Geometry Types
--------------
Vehicles
Buildings
People
Terrain
Cities
Things (Built/Manufactured)
Plants
Animals
Insects
Marine Life

Geometry Representations
------------------------
Explicit Boundary
	Polygonal
		Triangles
		Quadrilaterals
	Spline Surfaces
		NURBS
	Wireframe
Implicit Primitives
	CSG
Volumetric (voxels)
Textual

Primitives
----------
prep
shot
medial axis
bounding box
bounding sphere
surface area
volume
centroid

Major Work Areas
----------------
Geometry Database
Representation Conversions
Importers/Exporters
Geometry Editing
Global Illumination
Animation
Visualization
Geometric Evaluation
Materials Database

Work Breakdown Structure
------------------------
Requirements & Reasoning (why?)
Features & Capabilities (what?)
Benefactors & Proponents (who?)
Benefits
Tasks broken down into one month effort
Aggregate tasks indicate integration effort
