Open CASCADE Technology 7.6.0 released

Open Cascade is pleased to announce a new public release of Open CASCADE Technology (version 7.6.0).

Open CASCADE Technology version 7.6.0 is a minor release, which includes more than 410 improvements and corrections over the previous minor release 7.5.0.

Version 7.6.0 introduces new features of most OCCT modules and components.

In particular, the robustness of modeling algorithms was improved in addition to the numerous bug fixes. In terms of Visualization, new interactive object AIS_LightSource for a light source was introduced. Also, the performance of rectangular selection and Compatibility with WebGL and OpenGL ES were improved. New Data Exchange features include reading of kinematics entities from STEP files and glTF import/export improvements. OCAF allows safe reading of independent OCAF documents in different threads and partial document loading. Draw Test Harness functionality has been extended with multi-touch viewer gestures on Windows platform support.
To continue making OCCT materials more user-friendly, some improvements affected Samples and Documentation including fixes for iOS sample building and highlighting for code snippets throughout the documentation.

New in OCCT 7.6.0:

General

• Dropped support of VS2008 (finally).
• Compilation on ARM64 (Apple M1).
• New interface Standard::StackTrace() for dumping stack trace.
• Removed a set of deprecated classes (TCollection, legacy Boolean operation API and others).

Modeling

• Numerous bug fixes and improved robustness of modeling algorithms.
• Added progress indication and user break support for Boolean operations, GeomPlate, DistShapeShape, Shape Offset.
• Added multi-thread mode of BRepCheck_Analyzer.
• Prohibition of scaled transformation within shape location.

Visualization

• Improved compatibility with WebGL and OpenGL ES.
• New interactive object AIS_LightSource for a light source.
• Support for shadow casting using shadow maps (without ray-tracing).
• Improved performance of rectangular selection.
• New selection scheme interface to AIS_InteractiveContext.
• New accurate order-independent transparency (OIT) option – depth peeling.
• OpenGL and OpenGL ES are no more mutually exclusive graphic drivers (TKOpenGl and TKOpenGles can be now built simultaneously).
• Ray-Tracing engine is now available within OpenGL ES 3.2.
• Regression testing of OpenGL ES graphic driver.
• More flexible configuration (Xlib, FreeType can be now excluded).

Mesh

• Store deflection calculated upon triangulation along with parameters passed to a mesher to Poly_Triangulation.

Data Exchange

• Kinematics entities can be read now from a STEP file.
• glTF import/export improvements and fixes for passing the validator.
• Support of KHR_draco_mesh_compression extension within glTF import.
• Introduced OSD_FileSystem for working with file streams.

Application Framework

• Improvements of XCAF document persistence (normal storage, length unit information, option to store in older format).
• Safe reading of independent OCAF documents in different threads.
• Partial loading of OCAF document and appending parts to document.
• Speed up methods of getting label by entry and vice versa.

IVtk

• Extraction of per-vertex surface normals for smooth shading.
• VTK9 compatibility fixes.

Draw Test Harness

• Tk is now an optional dependency (USE_TK in CMake).
• Support building DRAWEXE with statically linked plugins and as WebAssembly.
• Support multi-touch viewer gestures on Windows platform.

Samples

• Fixes for iOS sample building.

Documentation

• Added changelog for XCafBin and XCafXml storage formats.
• Added highlighting for code snippets throughout the documentation.

Detailed information about this release is available in ReleaseNotes (PDF). To download Open CASCADE Technology 7.6.0, follow the link. Feel free to contact us for any additional information.