One way of getting symmetricity in C++ using the first approach is to do something like this: if (a->intersect(b)) return; if (b->intersect(a)) return; general

One way of getting symmetricity in C++ using the first approach is to do something like this: if (a->intersect(b)) return; if (b->intersect(a)) return; general_intersect(a, b); (making the base version return false, and adding return true to any overrides) This way you would only need to add the Ellipse/HyperFrob specialization to the HyperFrob class.