works on the
XM-1 tank in BRL‑CAD on a
PDP‑11/70 computer system, circa 1980. In 1979, the U.S. Army
Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) expressed a need for tools that could assist with the computer simulation and engineering analysis of combat vehicle systems and environments. When no CAD package was found to be adequate for this purpose, BRL software developers – led by
Mike Muuss – began assembling a suite of utilities capable of interactively displaying, editing, and interrogating geometric models. This suite became known as BRL-CAD. Development on BRL-CAD as a package subsequently began in 1983; the first public release was made in 1984. BRL-CAD became an
open-source project in December 2004. The BRL-CAD
source code repository is the oldest known public
version-controlled codebase in the world that is still under active development, dating back to 1983-12-16 00:10:31
UTC. == See also ==