BB(nged)

💅 BB(nged) — the bounding box bestie

okay so real talk, this is bb from the nged manual — that's BRL-CAD User Commands, for the uninitiated ✨. She's the one you call when you need to know how big a thing actually is, and honestly? She ate.

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🌸 NAME 🌸

bb — reports dimensional information about objects using Bounding Boxes 🎀

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

bb [-c] [-q] [-v] object1 [object2 object3 ...]

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So bb calculates a bounding box for an object (or a whole lil squad of objects) that you pass as arguments, and then it reports info about the bounding box dimensions right at the MGED command prompt. She supports a bunch of options, and most of them just control what kind of info gets reported. She can also optionally create an ARB8 in a database that matches the bounding box of your object(s). By default it's an axis-aligned bounding box (AABB), but bestie, support for an oriented bounding box (OBB) is available too 👑

The objects list is literally just one or more geometry objects in the current database. That's it. That's the vibe.

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -c bbox_object_name.s — Creates an ARB8 primitive in the current database with the dimensions of the bounding box of the object(s) you listed. Slay 💅
• -d — Reports dimensional information (length, width and height). This one's on by default, she's just always there 🫶
• -e — Reports the extent of the bounding box using the min and max 3D points of the bounding box.
• -m — Reports the midpoint / center (x y z) of the bounding box.
• -o — Calculates an oriented bounding box instead of an axis aligned bounding box. This will produce tighter bounding volumes if the geometry is not symmetric to the XYZ grid 🔥. Uses the algorithms and code from Barequet and Har-Peled — see the papers Efficiently Approximating the Minimum-Volume Bounding Box of a Point Set in Three Dimensions (http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/~sariel/papers/98/bbox.html) (SODA 99) and A Practical Approach for Computing the Diameter of a Point-Set (http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/~sariel/research/papers/00/diam.html) for details. iykyk 📚
• -q — Quiet mode, aka disable printing of the header, which is on by default. Super useful when you're processing output from bb. Lowkey essential ngl 🙈
• -u — Ignore air volumes when calculating the bounding box. Air? not invited to this party 💀
• -v — Print the volume of the bounding box. On by default, main character behavior.

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

Example 1 — determine the size of the bounding box for a Havoc helicopter 🚁

mged> bb havoc
Bounding Box Dimensions, Object(s) havoc:
X Length: 1988.4 cm
Y Length: 1683.6 cm
Z Length: 625.0 cm
Bounding Box Volume: 2092246392.4 cm^3

Example 2 — report only the min and max points of a bounding box

mged> bb -q -e havoc
min {-759.447479 -8437.866455 -890.000000} max {19124.621094 8397.693207 5360.000000}

Example 3 — bounding box for multiple components 🧩

mged> bb havoc_front havoc_middle havoc_tail
Bounding Box Dimensions, Object(s) havoc_front,  havoc_middle,  havoc_tail:
X Length: 1775.9 cm
Y Length: 358.0 cm
Z Length: 536.0 cm
Bounding Box Volume: 340782488.9 cm^3

Example 4 — create an ARB8 bounding box 🎀

mged> bb -c havoc_parts_bbox.s havoc_front havoc_middle havoc_tail
Bounding Box Dimensions, Object(s) havoc_front,  havoc_middle,  havoc_tail:
X Length: 1775.9 cm
Y Length: 358.0 cm
Z Length: 536.0 cm
Bounding Box Volume: 340782488.9 cm^3

mged> l havoc_parts_bbox.s
havoc_parts_bbox.s:  ARB8
        1 (-75.9447, -158, -4.86374e-06)
        2 (-75.9447, -158, 536)
        3 (-75.9447, 200, 536)
        4 (-75.9447, 200, -4.86374e-06)
        5 (1700, -158, -4.86374e-06)
        6 (1700, -158, 536)
        7 (1700, 200, 536)
        8 (1700, 200, -4.86374e-06)

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🔍 SEE ALSO 🔍

make_bb(nged) — go give her a look too 🫶

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👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

This software is Copyright (c) 2009-2026 United States Government as represented by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. Respect the paperwork bestie 📜

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💀 BUG REPORTS 💀

Reports of bugs or problems should be submitted via electronic mail to bugs@brlcad.org. Not me being the messenger, but like… tell them, not me 😭

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🌟 AUTHOR 🌟

BRL-CAD Team

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and that's the whole page, bestie — brought to you by the BRL-CAD girlies, BB(nged), no cap 💜✨