A Generic Lazy Evaluation Scheme for Exact Geometric Computations

Abstract: We present a generic C++ design to perform efficient and exact geometric computations using lazy evaluations. Exact geometric computations are critical for the robustness of geometric algorithms. Their efficiency is also critical for most applications, hence the need for delaying the exact computations at run time until they are actually needed. Our approach is generic and extensible in the sense that it is possible to make it a library which users can extend to their own geometric objects or primitives. It involves techniques such as generic functor adaptors, dynamic polymorphism, reference counting for the management of directed acyclic graphs and exception handling for detecting cases where exact computations are needed. It also relies on multiple precision arithmetic as well as interval arithmetic. We apply our approach to the whole geometric kernel of CGAL.