Modelling with constraints: a bibliographical survey

Nowadays, constraint solvers play a fundamental role in many graphical applications, including geometrical and mechanical CAD systems, layouts, user interfaces and animation. These applications use constraints to conveniently describe the relations between objects. Constraints are automatically maintained and satisfied by a constraint solver. So, numerical and tedious tasks are left to the solver and the designer can concentrate on the design process. In this paper, we present the concepts of constraints and constraint solvers. We classify the principal resolution methods, giving their drawbacks and shortcomings. We also examine different application domains using constraint solvers