The ACM/SIGGRAPH Symposia on Solid Modeling and Applications provide an international forum for the exchange of recent research and practical results in all areas and applications of solid modeling. These symposia bring together prominent researchers, practitioners, and numerous students in the field.

The sixth ACM Symposium on Solid Modeling and Applications was held in Ann Arbor, Michigan on June 4-8, 2001. The general chair was Deba Dutta of the University of Michigan, the tutorials chair was Hans-Peter Seidel of the Max Planck Institute and the program committee comprised 25 prominent experts in solid modeling in industries and universities from around the world. Previous symposia in this series were in Austin, Texas, 1991; Montreal, Canada, 1993; Salt Lake City, Utah, 1995; Atlanta, Georgia, 1997, and Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1999.

More than 90 papers were submitted to the 2001 symposium, only 30 of which could be accepted. From the 30 papers presented at the symposium, 11 were selected for this special issue of JCISE. These papers have all been updated and extended since being presented at the conference.

The topics of the papers include fundamental issues on the representation and manipulation of solid models, surface fairing, feature recognition, feature model validity, reverse engineering, and collaborative design. Altogether, the papers describe interesting solutions to important problems in solid modelling, as well as innovative directions for future research in this area.

We thank the authors for revising and extending their original papers for this special issue, and thank the reviewers for their valuable comments.

We hope that you enjoy reading the papers in this special issue, and that this encourages you to participate in future solid modeling symposia.

Editors Note

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has now become an official co-sponsor of this journal. ACM members will serve on JCISE Editorial and Advisory Boards. We welcome ACM readers and invite them to actively participate in every aspect of this journal. We look forward to continued collaboration with ACM and particularly the Solid Modeling conferences.