Boolean operation is a way to combine simple geometries into complex ones.

Note There is no need to use Boolean operation to dig a hole inside a larger volume in order to place a smaller one inside the larger one. Placing a small volume directly inside a larger one won’t create overlapping. Instead, the smaller volume becomes a daughter volume of the larger one.

Boolean operation

Three tutorials are provided here to demonstrate how to create a complex geometry using the Boolean operation.

Tophat geometry

A tophat geometry is described in tophat.tg which is visualized using tophat.mac:

$ gears tophat.mac

You need to install dawn or HepRApp to view the result.

Frame geometry

frame1.tg and frame1.mac are created to demonstrate that RayTracer always works to visualize geometries that other visualization drivers cannot handle. frame2.tg and frame2.mac are created to demonstrate how to avoid creating a geometry that are problematic in visualization.

$ gears frame1.mac # can only be visualized by RayTracer
$ gears frame2.mac # can be visualized by any tool

Hemispherical HPGe detector

Run the following command to produce four png files showing how to create a hemispherical Ge detector with holders using the Boolean operation step by step:

$ ./cut.sh

One has to have the shell command convert available to generate the png files. Detailed settings and usage of DAWN are demonstrated in cut.mac and cut.sh.