"No appropriate default constructor available"--Why is the default constructor even called?

Question

I've looked at a few other questions about this, but I don't see why a default constructor should even be called in my case. I could just provide a default constructor, but I want to understand why it is doing this and what it affects.

error C2512: 'CubeGeometry' : no appropriate default constructor available  

I have a class called ProxyPiece with a member variable of CubeGeometry.The constructor is supposed to take in a CubeGeometry and assign it to the member variable. Here is the header:

#pragma once
#include "CubeGeometry.h"

using namespace std;
class ProxyPiece
{
public:
    ProxyPiece(CubeGeometry& c);
    virtual ~ProxyPiece(void);
private:
    CubeGeometry cube;
};

and the source:

#include "StdAfx.h"
#include "ProxyPiece.h"

ProxyPiece::ProxyPiece(CubeGeometry& c)
{
    cube=c;
}


ProxyPiece::~ProxyPiece(void)
{
}

the header for cube geometry looks like this. It doesn't make sense to me to use a default constructor. Do I need it anyways?:

#pragma once
#include "Vector.h"
#include "Segment.h"
#include <vector>

using namespace std;

class CubeGeometry
{
public:
    CubeGeometry(Vector3 c, float l);

    virtual ~CubeGeometry(void);

    Segment* getSegments(){
        return segments;
    }

    Vector3* getCorners(){
        return corners;
    }

    float getLength(){
        return length;
    }

    void draw();

    Vector3 convertModelToTextureCoord (Vector3 modCoord) const;

    void setupCornersAndSegments();

private:
    //8 corners
    Vector3 corners[8];

    //and some segments
    Segment segments[12];

    Vector3 center;
    float length;
    float halfLength;
};

Answer 1

Your default constructor is implicitly called here:

ProxyPiece::ProxyPiece(CubeGeometry& c)
{
    cube=c;
}

You want

ProxyPiece::ProxyPiece(CubeGeometry& c)
   :cube(c)
{
    
}

Otherwise your ctor is equivalent to

ProxyPiece::ProxyPiece(CubeGeometry& c)
    :cube() //default ctor called here!
{
    cube.operator=(c); //a function call on an already initialized object
}

The thing after the colon is called a member initialization list.

Incidentally, I would take the argument as const CubeGeometry& c instead of CubeGeomety& c if I were you.