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     Iso2mesh - a compact, powerful yet simple-to-use 3D mesh generator

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Iso2mesh ChangeLog (key features marked by *):

2017/01/16  (1.8.0, codename: Deviled Egg - final)
        1.**robust surface boolean operator based on Cork
        2. update tetgen 1.5 to 1.5.1
        3. new function: insurface for point-in-surface test
        4.*new function: fillsurf for tesselating a closed surface
        5. new function: surfvolume for calculating the volume of an enclosed surface
        6.*new function: innersurf/outersurf: interior and exterior parts of a surface
        7. meshcylinders supports a series of segments, also returns PLC
        8. surfedge/volface return tet element id for the face triangles
        9. plotmesh supports element-based colormap
       10. s2v outputs mesh-to-voxel transformation matrix
       11.*JSONlab updates to 1.5 Nominus alpha
       12. display binary utility download URL when missing
       13. faceneighbor returns row- or column-major facelist
       14. fix half-voxel offset bug in cgalmesher
       15. surf2vol and s2v now rasterize labeled surfaces and tetrahedral mesh
       16. disable binary compression for Mac OS to avoid crashes
       17. fix uniqedges edgemap output bug

2015/09/19  (1.7.9, codename: Deviled Egg - beta)
        1. make v2m(method=cgalmesh) output repeatable
        2.**JSONlab update to 1.1
        3. qmeshcut allows to exact plane that are exactly parallel to the faces
        4.*surf2mesh supports region-based volume control
        5. fix getvarfrom workspace bug
        6.*meshrefine can insert external nodes to the mesh
        7. allow binsurface to mesh a 2d image
        8.**significantly improved meshrefine - sizing field, new nodes etc
        9. support OSX Yosemite
        10. fix s2m face label bug
        11.*plotmesh supports plotting 3d polyline and loop objects
        12. extract junction lines from a surface group
        13. extractloops now supports open contours
        14. latticegrid - 3D lattice function
        15.**GPU accelerated mesh rasterization - mesh2mask/mesh2vol/m2v (experimental)
        16. add regular grid generation by meshgrid5 and meshgrid6
        17. fix plotmesh bugs
        18. export to GMSH format (by Riccardo Scorretti)

2013/07/16  (1.5.0, codename: Laba Porridge - final)
        1.*label-wise mesh density control in CGAL 3D mesher (contributed by Peter Varga)
        2. plotting mesh slices using "{x,y,z}=value" syntax in plotmesh selector

2013/01/20  (1.4.9, codename: Laba Porridge - beta)
        1.*loadjson and savejson for unified 3D mesh data exchange
        2. support COMSOL mphtxt file format (Donghyeon Kim)
        3. raytrace outputs intersection element ID list
        4.*qmeshcut supports more flexible mesh slicing options
        5. plotmesh accepts cell array face list for general polyhedra handling
        6. s2m supports 'cgalpoly' option
        7. fix remeshsurf coordinate offset bug
        8. return region seeds from v2s
        9. new function meshrefine for mesh refinement
       10. saving surface mesh to STL (ASCII or binary) format
       11. new function meshacylinder to mesh a 3D cylinder
       12.**surface mesh boolean operations (surfboolean) via GTS library
       13. qmeshcut supports element-based value list
       14. fast mesh intersection testing utilities surfboolean('self')
       15.**self-intersecting surface repairing and decoupling using meshfix utility
       16. export mesh to ABAQUS format
       17.*add binaries for 32/64bit Intel Mac OS and Raspberry Pi (armhf)
       18.*define a JSON-based mesh format (JMesh) for general-purpose data exchange
       19. add surfreorient,readgts,savegts,uniqedges,raysurf,savejmesh and many more

2011/06/03 (1.0.1, codename: Mapo Tofu - Update 1)
        1. added 64bit CGAL binaries for Linux (Windows/MacOS are not yet supported)
        2.*plotmesh can use the 4th column of node input as colormap/value
        3.*accept "cgalpoly" method option in v2m and vol2mesh
        4. savemedit output supports the label column
        5.*orient all triangles counter-clockwise for surface plotting
        6. added edgeneighbors to report neighboring triangles in a surface

2011/02/27 (1.0.0, codename: Mapo Tofu)
        1. fixed mwpath/mcpath octave warning
	2. used consistent opt.distbound flag for cgalv2m and cgalv2s
	3. fixed a bug in plotmesh to allow using plotting styles
	4. added a method parameter in sms
	5. fixed a bug in mergemesh with more than 2 inputs
	6. added mesh quality metric function (Joe-Liu metric)
	7.*added ray-tracing functions (using the Havel's method)
	8.*robust and fast surface interior point determination
	9.*label multi-part surfaces inside vol2surf
       10. new functions surfplane/surfseeds/surfinterior/meshedge
       11. use SVN revison number as the default extra version tag

2011/01/31 (0.9.9, codename: Mapo Tofu-RC1)
        1.*specifying seeds for cgalsurf and cgalmesh modules
        2.*perturbing isovalues to avoid non-manifold geometries
        3. added plottetview to call tetview for mesh display on octave
        4. added a new demo - a "hello world" example
        5. speed optimization for octave
        6. optimized memory use for surf2vol
        7. made nodevolume support surfaces
        8. added savemedit to export tetrahedral mesh in Medit format
        9. compress most binaries with upx to save space
       10. set up binary file extension fallback to help Mac users
       11.*added functions to mesh simple geometries such as a sphere etc
       12. added meshmerge to merge multiple meshes and surfaces
       13. added s2v shortcut for surf2vol
       14. updated cgalsurf to specify initial point cloud size
       15. added iso2meshver to track version numbers
       16. automatic handling of label column in face and elem plots

2010/07/14 (0.9.8, codename: Mapo Tofu-beta)
        1.*added surf2vol, converting a closed surface to a binary volume
        2. fixed deletemeshfile bug for Windows
        3. automatic repairing when meshresample fails
        4. fast faceneighbors unit
        5.*added CGAL 3D mesher for robust meshing of segmented volumes
        6. added CGAL 3D polyhedral mesher as an alternative to tetgen
        7. corrected bugs in Laplacian+HC and Lowpass smoothing algorithms
        8. added sms.m as the shortcut for surfsmooth
        9. added exporters for DXF and VRML mesh formats
       10. added user name to the temporary files to avoid permission conflict
       11. added force-bounding-box option for surf2mesh
       12. added nodevolume, elemvolume from FEMcore and meshreorient
       13. added sortmesh to optimize node and element ordering
       14.*mesh refinement using the 4-th column of surface node
       15. thining a volumetric binary image
       16.*added remeshsurf to repair self-intersecting surfaces
       17. added demo scripts for remeshsurf and mesh smoothing
       18. unify help text format, add bash script to generate function list
       19. use opt.side to specify upper/lower interface of a labeled region
       20.*added a mesh plotting function - plotmesh

2009/05/04 (0.8.0, codename: Hotpot)
        1. added stopping criteria for cgalsurf surface extractor to 
           avoid hanging for certain datasets
        2.*added support for mesh generation from 3D gray-scale images
        3. more robust and fast imedge3d (thanks to Aslak Grinsted)
        4. fixed the origins for 'simplify' and 'cgalsurf', the origin is now
           set to the exterior vertex for voxel (1,1,1) (as a cube)
        5. updated documents
        6. renamed "bound" to "face" to avoid confusions
        7.*added v2m, v2s and s2m as the shortcuts for vol2mesh, vol2surf 
           and surf2mesh, respectively; added demo script for shortcuts
        8. mcpath searches <iso2mesh>/bin first, no PATH setting is required
           (thanks to Aslak Grinsted)
        9. many other minor fixes and cleaning

2009/02/11 (0.7.9-1, codename: Hotpot-beta)
        1. compiled all the binaries on Mac OS (PowerPC) and
           tested on an Intel Mac
        2.*recompiled all linux and windows binaries with optimized speed
           and reduced system dependencies
        3. speeded up bounary field calculation with dedicated imedge3d
        4. added TODO

2009/02/07 (0.7.9, codename: Hotpot-alpha)
        1.*incorporated CGAL Surface mesher as the default vol2surf
           mesh extraction scheme (thank to Pierre Alliez's suggestion
           and Laurent Rineau and Mariette Yvinec for developing this utility)
        2. added sub-region labeling for multi-valued images
        3. added cgalsurf binaries for Windows
        4. tested the toolbox with Octave for Windows on a vista machine,
           applied a few fixes to make it compatible
        5. recompiled tetgen.exe to get the max-element-volume constraint
           finally work

2008/12/27 (0.7.8, codename: Hotpot-alpha)
        1. try to handle the self-intersecting element problems, 
           added getintersecttri.m to extract intesecting element IDs
        2. implemented Laplacian+HC and Low-pass filter mesh smoothing
           algorithms; unfortunately, they are not effective to remove the 
           self-intersecting elements
        3. sent email to CGAL list to ask advices to handle self-intersecting
           element.

2008/12/05 (0.6.0, codename: Quesadilla)
        1. iso2mesh is now compatible with GNU Octave.
        2. replaced matlab's isosurface by a home-made binsurface to produce
           well-behaved triangular or cubic surfaces from binary images
        3. added qmeshcut, a fast tetrahedral mesh cross-section plot
        4. updated tetgen binary for 64bit Linux (mexa64), which caused some crashes
        5. provided instructions when user encounters a "permission denied" error

2008/11/08 (0.5.1, codename: Footlong)
        1. added meshing tool binaries for Windows (95-vista)
        2. added meshing tool binaries for Mac OS
        3. tagged all bin/ files and binaries files in sample/
           with -kb option in the cvs

2008/10/30 (0.5, alpha release, codename: Footlong)
        1. created a sourceforge project, pointing to 
           the project main page at orbit.
        2. wrote documents and polish file structures
        3. included more sample codes and data
        4. defined a global variable "ISO2MESH_TEMP" to control the 
           temporary file directory; "ISO2MESH_BIN" for bin folder
           location and "ISO2MESH_SESSION" for temporary file prefix
           and enable parallel meshing sessions and restricted user 
           environments
        5. renamed all temporary files as pre_smesh/post_smesh/
           pre_remesh/post_remeshpre_vmesh/post_vmesh to identify
           the processing stage
        6. split vol2mesh into vol2surf and surf2mesh
        7. uploading wiki pages with documentation drafts and 
           examples outputs

2008/10/10 (0.4)
        1. added subroutines for mesh validation and repairing
        2. included JMeshLib for non-manifold node removal

2008/01/10 (0.3)
        1. added vol2mesh and the related scripts
        2. iso2mesh is able to mesh breast geometry from 3D 
           tomosynthesis scan and a mouse head model from CT images.

2008/04/08 (0.2)
        1. qslim produces self-intersecting meshes after 
           simplification, which is not good. It is now replaced
           by CGAL mesh simplification module
        2. modified CGAL mesh simplification code to preserve all
           edges nodes (keep them co-planar)

2007/12/27 (0.1.1)
        1. used mexext to distinguish binaries for different platforms

2007/11/25 (0.1)
        1. initial upload to cvs, as a module of redbird2
        2. used qslim to perform mesh simplification and tetgen 
         for mesh generation
        3. supported both win32 and Linux
        4. added sample data and scripts
