Computational Geometry Algorithms Library

The Computational Geometry Algorithms Library (CGAL) is a software library of computational geometry algorithms. While primarily written in C++, Scilab bindings and bindings generated with SWIG (supporting Python and Java for now) are also available.

The software is available under dual licensing scheme. When used for other open source software, it is available under open source licenses (LGPL or GPL depending on the component). In other cases commercial license may be purchased, under different options for academic/research and industrial customers.

The CGAL project was founded in 1996, as a consortium of eight research institutions in Europe and Israel: Utrecht University, ETH Zurich, Free University of Berlin, INRIA Sophia Antipolis, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Max Planck Institute for Informatics Saarbrücken, Johannes Kepler University Linz, and Tel-Aviv University. The original funding for the project came from the ESPRIT project of the European Union. Originally, its licensing terms allowed its software to be used freely for academic purposes, with commercial licenses available for other uses. CGAL Releases 3.x were distributed under the QPL license. Starting with CGAL 4.0, released in 2012, CGAL it is distributed under the GPL version 3. As of 2013^[update] it is managed by a thirteen-member editorial board, with an additional 30 developers and reviewers.