SPM

The Solid Modeling Symposium series is an international forum for the exchange of recent research and applications of solid modeling, shape modeling, and geometric computation in design, analysis and manufacturing, as well as in emerging biomedical, geophysical and other areas. Previous symposia in this series were held in Austin, Texas, 1991; Montreal, Canada, 1993; Salt Lake City, Utah, 1995; Atlanta, Georgia, 1997; and Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1999 and 2001. These brought together prominent researchers, practitioners, and numerous students in the field.The Seventh ACM Symposium on Solid Modeling and Applications was held at the Max-Planck-Institut für Infomatik, in Saarbrücken, Germany, on June 17-21, 2002. Starting in 2002, the Symposium is expected to be held annually, alternating in location between the USA and other countries with a two year period. Pre-symposium activities included short courses and tutorials held on the two days preceding the plenary sessions. We thank ACM SIGGRAPH and Eurographics for sponsoring the symposium, and the Max-Planck-Institut für Infomatik for organizing the symposium this year. In particular, we thank Hans-Peter Seidel and Vadim Shapiro for their work as general co-chairs of the symposium. We also thank Jens Vorsatz for developing and maintaining the web site of the symposium http://www.mpi-sb.mpg.de/conferences/sm02/ and Sabine Budde, conference secretary, for assisting in the conference organization.Ninety three papers were submitted to the symposium. All papers were assigned to a member of the program committee by the program co-chairs. Each paper was reviewed by the program committee member and, in general, at least three reviewers selected by the program commitee member. Based on the recommendations of the program committee members and the reviewers, the program co-chairs made the final selections of the papers and posters. We thank all the members of the program committee and reviewers for their expert assistance in this selection process. The final program of the symposium consists of 9 refereed paper sessions with 26 paper presentations and a poster session with 17 posters. There are also 3 invited papers. These proceedings contain the 43 refereed papers and the abstracts of the three invited papers. Unfortunately, as is the case in conferences where many papers are submitted and only a small number can be accepted, some good papers could not be accepted. We thank all the authors of all papers for their contributions to the success of this symposium. The topics of the papers range from fundamental issues on the representation and manipulation of solid models to applications of solid modeling in various fields. Altogether, the papers present many interesting solutions to current problems in solid modeling, as well as valuable insights for future work in this area.