The PHIGS system is a computer graphics standard defining an interface between an application program and a computer graphics system. The PHIGS standard has received wide acceptance throughout the computer graphics industry and PHIGS libraries are available on most of the high-performance 3-D graphics platforms today, including IBM, DEC, HP, SUN, Alliant, Stardent, and Silicon Graphics. In spite of this acceptance, there are no PHIGS texts available to the average software engineer or graphics students. PHIGS by Example will be that text. Written with the novice programmer in mind, the book starts with examples of very basic concepts and, after careful exploration of these aspects, moves on to more advanced topics. PHIGS by Example teaches the application programmer how to use the PHIGS standard in his/her own program. Each section of the book is built around programming examples, using the strategy that the best way to learn PHIGS is to use PHIGS. The sections begin with a conceptual discussion of the PHIGS topics presented in that section and is followed by a detailed explanation of an example program or subroutine. The sections are concluded with a set of exercises that are designed to challenge the reader to experiment with PHIGS functions describes in that section. The text assumes that the reader is familiar with basic graphics concepts; a complete understanding of these basics is helpful, but not required.