Dear user of GroIMP,

this is the user manual of GroIMP, the GROGRA-related Interactive Modelling Platform. GroIMP is OSI certified open source software and available at the web page www.grogra.de. Currently, the GroIMP software is in a BETA state, which means that malfunctions may occur, though the software has been tested in-depth. The latest news can be found at the web page.

GroIMP arose out of academic research in the field of plant modelling, mainly carried out by the Chair for Practical Computer Science / Graphics Systems at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus (Germany) and the Plant Modelling Group at the Institute of Forest Biometry and Informatics at the University of Gottingen (Germany). During research, techniques of rule-based plant-modelling were developed and refined, and quickly it became clear that these rather abstract techniques have to be accompanied by a smart, interactive and user-friendly software platform with an up-to-date graphical user interface. The result of the effort of bringing together elaborated rule-based modelling and user-friendly, interactive software is GroIMP and its various plug-ins, which extend GroIMP with additional functionality.

In the current version, GroIMP supports 3D modelling with OpenGL-based rendering, including various forms of NURBS surfaces, rule-based modelling using Lindenmayer systems and rule-based modelling using Relational Growth Grammars (RGG) expressed in the programming language XL. It also contains a 2D interface for visualization and modification of network-like structures.

As GroIMP is open source software, you are invited to contribute to this software. Have a look at the web page to get the latest news and source code!

In its current state, this user manual is by far not complete. It explains some basics of how to work with GroIMP's user interface, more detailed documentation will be published later.

We wish you much fun and success with GroIMP.

The GroIMP development team