Overview

• What Is Open Inventor?
• Objects, not Drawings
• How Does Open Inventor Relate to OpenGL?
• The Inventor Toolkit
• Inventor Component Library
• Inventor Class Tree
• Extending the Toolkit
• Window System Extensions
• Cross-Platform Extensions
• Optimizations

Chapter Objectives. After reading this chapter, you'll be able to do the following:

• Identify the key elements that constitute the Open Inventor toolkit
• Explain the relationship of Open Inventor to OpenGL

• Describe several ways to extend Open Inventor

  This chapter describes the key elements in Open Inventor and briefly outlines how you can tailor your use of this toolkit to a particular set of needs. It explains how Inventor relates to programming tools you may already be familiar with, such as OpenGL and the X Window System. Most of the topics mentioned in this chapter are covered in detail in later chapters of this book.