The Time-Object User-Interface

 

The project Time-Object user-interface provides buttons to read description files, to navigate through TimeSteps and to handle int and time-dependent double parameter. Additionally it provides access to some debugging methods and to methods managing (parts of) different geometries.

The interface always shows the data of the current Time_Object, the title contains the class and name of this object. The interface may be partly deactivated if no object is available.

  
Figure 8.13: User Interface for Project Time_Object

Pop up a layer showing information about the current object in the data hierarchy, pressing this button has the same effect as clicking with the left mouse button on the current object in the manag menu. What information is presented depends on the "get-info" method of the object's class.

Change the display to debug mode. You can now pick points or objects in the graphic window, information about the objects picked are printed to the shell GRAPE was started in. In debug mode the control window is deactivated, only mouse clicks in the graphics window are accepted. As usual the left and right mouse button are used to pick objects and the middle button aborts, see the message-field at the bottom of the manager window.

For Surface and its subclasses a "debug" method is provided (this is possible because the geometry structure of these classes is fixed), for Time_Object instances debugging only works if a method "debug" is defined on the class of the instance's geometry.

Reset the Time_Object to the initial state, i.e. as if nothing had been computed yet. This is only necessary for subclasses like Amandus which use a step by step approach to compute their objects.

Pressing this button calls "show-send" on the current object in the data hierarchy. This methods prints lots of information to stdout, for Triang classes for example the coordinates of all points and the connectivity of all elements is printed.

Be careful when using this button on a Time_Object with many frames, the data of all frames will be printed....

If a Time_Object consists of several separate geometries (i.e. if there are several instances in its geometry chain, this is for example the case for a cube created with the Surface_Builder which consist of six objects (sides) or for a Surfaces created by reflection) they are merged into a single geometry.

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After merging geometries it sometimes is necessary to remove the by now interior boundary lines of the formerly separate objects. The neighbourhood connectivity is then extended over the whole surface, applying this to curves may close start and end point if they are close together.

The close operation is effected by several parameter which can be controlled with the layer that pops up when the config button is pressed.

 
Figure 8.14: Close Config Layer

The ruler controls upto which distance boundaries or points should be identified, for the comparison the ruler value weighted with the boundary lengths is used. If the checkbox is on boundaries smaller than the (absolute) ruler value are completely removed, if is on some debugging information is printed to stderr. The layer stays open until it is removed with the button.

This cleans up the geometries. Depending on the class of the geometry this will remove unused points, free unused memory, remove inactive curves etc.

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Compute the objects of the current frame or the whole sequence depending on the current task (see next paragraph). For some classes like Amandus it may be necessary to press the button to be able to recompute objects.

The task controls which geometries are computed when the button is pressed. It allows to attack mathematical problems by computing an object in a step by step process, at first simple things like a parameter domain, then specific functions in that data and at the end the whole geometry. For Time-Object only the task GEOMETRY is allowed, subprojects add further tasks.

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Read or write (still not implemented) a description file. The type of the file -- specified by the file extension (*.to for Time-Object, for a description of the format see section 8.2.1.3) -- depends on the class of the current object in the scene hierarchy. After clicking on this button a file requester appears and you can select a file.

Remark: If a time-dependent double parameter is defined in the description file name.extension, the system searches the current directory for a spline description file with name name_parm_i.sp where i is the number of the variable. If this file exists it is used otherwise a default spline is created by the system, for further information see the next section.

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The button in the middle shows the current frame and the number of frames for the current Time_Object. With the arrow buttons you can step to the next or the previous frame, by pressing the button and typing in a number you can select a frame directly.

Additionally to these buttons a button is added to the option menu by this project. When it is pressed the layer shown in figure 8.15 offering some display methods appears. For Time_Objects only "geometry-disp" is available, the subclasses add further geometries and therefore more display methods.