OccJava FAQ

How difficult and error-prone is the extension process based on SWIG ? Is it easy to add wrappers to the API ?

• Adding a new class or member without type redefinition takes 1 or 2 minutes (without testing).
• Adding a new type redefinition, for example the conversion of gp_Pnt to double[3] will take longer. Looking at what already exists may help but someone who does not already know swig and JNI will need about one day to add a new type redefinition. Not that type refinition is the key for performance and simplicity of the API.

How robust are the wrappers ? Do you ever get strange behaviors or is the quality production-class ?

Of course, such problems occured during the development but there are currently no known bugs in occjava-swig. None of the jCAE known bugs are related to occjava-swig.

How performant is the occjava-swig wrapper ? Does the occjava-swig wrapper enjoy full access to the API it wraps without penalty ?

The wrapper does nothing but calling Opencascade methods. The time required to handle an occjava-swig call is the sum of the JNI call time plus the Opencascade call time. Fast Opencascade methods call will spend more time in the JNI part (as JNI is quite slow). That's why, when it's possible, the wrapper provides methods to handle arrays instead of single elements. This tip coupled with type redefinition makes occjava-swig faster than Opencascade Wok based wrapper.

Do you have an opinion or know anything about potential Eclipse integration ?

There are no reasons why it should not be possible as Eclipse is in Java. Moreover I know it's now possible to include Java3d components in SWT.

What is already implemented in occjava-swig

Everything needed in jCAE, that is:

• Nearly everything to access the OpenCascade object model
• Some solid modeling features