Installing i3D

Obtaining a Copy of the Distribution

The distribution of i3D is available through anonymous ftp from the following sites (non exhaustive list):

ftp://ftp-venus.cern.ch/pub/I3D
ftp://www.cern.ch/pub/i3d
ftp://champagne.crs4.it/pub/I3D
ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/packages/I3D
i3D can be obtained through the Andrew File System (AFS) at /afs/cern.ch/user/i/i3dadm/public. Adding /afs/cern.ch/user/i/i3dadm/public/bin to your path is enough to run i3D on your system. However, the root directory for AFS might be different from /afs on your system. Check with your system administrator.

The current version is V1.1b2 and is running on Silicon Graphics workstations under IRIX 5.3 or later, and on DEC Alpha under OSF1 V3.2 or later with the OPEN3D option installed. The installation instructions are contained in the tar file.

It is highly recommended that you subscribe to the i3d mailing list if you take a copy of the distribution. You can do it here, type subscribe i3d as message body.

Serving 3D Objects Through HTTP

Before placing i3D's files on your HTTPserver, be sure to add the following line to your server's mime.types file:


	x-world/x-i3d              3d

Viewing 3D scenes from within a WWW Browser

The browsers supported by i3D are Mosaic and Netscape (starting from version 1.1). Netscape is the preferred choice.

To view 3D scenes from a WWW browser, you need to have the i3D viewer installed on your system and visible on your path. You will also need to add some lines to your .mime.types and .mailcap files in your home directory.

.mime.types Add a line to your .mime.types file for i3D 's files. This file maps filename extensions to a mime type.


	# For i3D files.
	x-world/x-i3d              3d
		
	# For VRML files.
	x-world/x-vrml		   wrl

.mailcap Add a line to your .mailcap file to define the viewer associated with x-world/x-i3d and x-world/x-vrml files


	# For i3D files
	x-world/x-i3d; 		   i3d -remote 'openURL(%s,%u)'

	# For VRML files      
	x-world/x-vrml; 	   i3d -remote 'openURL(%s,%u)'

Installing a Local i3D Help Server

You may want to install a local server for the HTML documents composing the on-line help. These documents are available through ftp at ftp://champagne.crs4.it/pub/Distrib/i3d_help_docs.tar. Then to tell the application to load your local help pages you need to set up help resource in the i3d resource file on your machine.

	i3d*help:	http://my_host/my_dir/i3d-help.html