The polyhedral surface (and other data structures in the Basic Library) can have added geometric attributes by the user that WOULD make a generally WORKING transform function for AFFINE transformations difficult to provide in the CLASS, and on the other hand it is easy for a user to apply standard generic algorithms for that purpose.

for example: to transform the points STORED in a polyhedral surface P with a CGAL affine transformation given in A (which is a proper STL functor) one can write:

std::transform (P.points_begin (), P.points_end (), P.points_begin (), A);

The polyhedral surface (and other data structures in the Basic Library) can have added geometric attributes by the user that would make a generally working transform function for affine transformations difficult to provide in the class, and on the other hand it is easy for a user to apply standard generic algorithms for that purpose.

for example: to transform the points stored in a polyhedral surface P with a CGAL affine transformation given in A (which is a proper STL functor) one can write:

std::transform (P.points_begin (), P.points_end (), P.points_begin (), A);