Patent ID: 7609907

Claim:
A method of visualizing field of view (FOV) constraints, comprising: computing effects of at least one constituent constraint upon a field of view; and visually displaying a representation of the effects of at least one constituent constraint upon the field of view, wherein the computing comprises: logically constructing a field of view comprised of a plurality of constituent constraints, each of which produces a single closed boundary contour with a constraint region either inside or outside of the closed boundary contour, evaluating sampled points on the contours for each of the plurality of constituent constraints to determine any arcs of contours that fall within constraint regions of other contours; and constructing a new contour defined by all arcs within the field of view, wherein visually displaying comprises displaying a graphical representation of the new contour, and wherein each constituent constraint further provides: a value procedure that determines if a given point is inside the constraint's region; an index procedure that returns a contour index for a given point, which is a real value that unambiguously encodes directions on the constraint's boundary contour; and a sampling procedure that returns an ordered array of sampled points that adequately capture an arc of the constraint's boundary contour between two specified contour indices.