Aux / Auxiliary

“Aux” is short for auxiliary, refering to supplementary or supportive information.

Within the InstanceGraph, these auxiliary structures are used to structure supplementary information, which is provided by the input data but does semantically not fit into the structure tree. Most importantly, aux structures hold two types of nodes found in 3D Data Resources:

• Model Views: Preconfigured configurations and viewpoints of the data set.

• PMI (Product Manufacturing Information): Additional engineering data that provides context and details such as dimensions, tolerances, or annotations.

The InstanceGraph provides access to these aux structures via a separate node hierarchy exposed in parallel to the structure tree for each resource. Just as structure nodes, aux node are adressable via their id to enable cross-referencing with other structure and aux nodes, enabling flexible linkage without cluttering the main structure of the InstanceGraph. The concept allows for a detailed representation of relationships between shapes, topological entities, structure nodes and aux nodes, for PMI or Model Views.

The following bi-directional relations are available:

• aux nodes <-> structure nodes

• aux nodes <-> shapes

• aux nodes <-> points

• aux nodes <-> faces

• aux nodes <-> edges

• aux nodes <-> points