From http://oss.sgi.com/projects/inventor/
Open Inventor(TM) is an object-oriented 3D toolkit offering a comprehensive
solution to interactive graphics programming problems. It presents a
programming model based on a 3D scene database that dramatically simplifies
graphics programming. It includes a rich set of objects such as cubes,
polygons, text, materials, cameras, lights, trackballs, handle boxes,
3D viewers, and editors that speed up your programming time and extend
your 3D programming capabilities. 
Open Inventor: 
	- is built on top of OpenGL (R)
	- defines a standard file format for 3D data interchange 
	- introduces a simple event model for 3D interaction 
	- provides animation objects called Engines 
	- provides high performance object picking 
	- is window system and platform independent 
	- is a cross-platform 3D graphics development system 
	- supports PostScript printing 
	- encourages programmers to create new customized objects 
	- is fun to use
WWW:  http://oss.sgi.com/projects/inventor/
christian.
c47g@gmx.at