This is the description for a general orientation of a component - it is used by the NXgeometry class Link to another object if we are using relative positioning, else absent The orientation information is stored as direction cosines. The direction cosines will be between the local coordinate directions and the reference directions (to origin or relative NXgeometry). Calling the local unit vectors (x',y',z') and the reference unit vectors (x,y,z) the six numbers will be [x' dot x, x' dot y, x' dot z, y' dot x, y' dot y, y' dot z] where "dot" is the scalar dot product (cosine of the angle between the unit vectors). The unit vectors in both the local and reference coordinates are right-handed and orthonormal. The pair of groups NXtranslation and NXorientation together describe the position of a component.