Generic Strips

Generic Strip  is a collection of geometrical objects, which has the same internal relationships as 2D Segment Strips. Example of non-line strip is a patch strip of a 3DS object, where patches have role identical to lines and edges act identically to points. This type of strip can be closed, which is demonstrated in Fig3 of the 3DS surfaces topic

Strips consist of two arrays of items: array of elements (act as segments in 2D Segment Strips) and array of connectors, which act as points in 2D Segment Strips.

Each element has either two references to its first and the second connectors (act as ends) or no ends at all. In the latter case the element is called closed element. Example: 2D strip, which consists of a single circle. If the i-th element in the array of elements has ends its first end is the i-th element in the array of connectors.

Strip which has no items of any kind is called empty.

A strip can have a single connector and no elements like a 2D strip which is a single point. This kind of strip is called Singleton

The first end of the first element is called the first end of the strip. The second end or the last element is called last end of the strip

A strip is called closed if its first end coincides with the last end or it has no ends but has a single closed element. Empty strips are not closed.