| | A primitive is a simple geometric shape from which other shapes can be built or extrapolated.
The most common shapes referred to as geometric primitives include boxes (including cubes), spheres, pyramids, cylinders, torii (doughnuts), planes, and n-gons (perfect solids).
In general, primitives are closed (except planes), and simple in shape. Most programs do, however, allow a user to specify the number of subdivisions from which a primitive is made up (for instance, a box might be made up of 8 height segements, 9 width segements, and two length segments, though it would only still have 6 'sides' despite a higher number of polygons.
There are several other shapes that are also commonly referred to as primitives, though they are also often considered more complex shapes. Among these are oiltanks, chamfer boxes, chamfer cylinders, capsules, springs, and so on.
For traditional reasons, despite the fact that this art hasn't truly been around long enough to reasonably lay claim to tradition, the teapot is usually considered a geometric primitive even though it is unclosed and complex in shape.
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