Get the Feeling

  Have a guided tour through the manag menu in this chapter.

You have created your first executable as shown in section 4. Start it from the command prompt (if is already running and you might have changed something press (in the upper right corner) and start it again.)

startup

You should see a graphics window showing a house with a little (hard to recognize) tree and a control window showing the manag-menu. Depending on the GraphicDevice (X or GL or ...) the house will be displayed as a wireframe or solid by default. (This can be switched, but not now).

First have a look into the transformation menu.

In the trans-menu. Play with the translation rulers

..

to move the object, with the

ruler to scale it and with

..

to rotate it.

Press reset to reset the transformation if you lost the object.

Switch to sphere rotation mode. You can click inside the sphere and then drag the mouse to rotate the object as if turning a ball.

Switch back to ruler rotation mode.

Press reset to reset the transformation.

Switch the camera on. The house is displayed perspectively.

Switch the camera off.

Press reset to reset the transformation.

Back to the manag menu.

First we explore the data hiarchy tree (scene tree).

In the upper middle of the control window is a button , this is the current object. The graphic window's contents are the graphical view of this Scene. Since it is a Scene it does nothing but display its sub node . Press this button now:

You stepped into the Scene tree. "House" is the current object now. "main" moved to the left, ready to bring you out again. Two new buttons appeared, and . These are sub objects of "House". Nothing should have changed in the graphics window.

When asked to display, "House" will display both Scenes, the tree and the chimney. "Chimney" displays the whole house. To see the chimney press

The tree disappears. The sub objects of Chimney are the real chimney object and the next scene .

The chimney disappears out of the graphics window. Note that the button moves up.

Only the walls remain.

Return.

Walk onto the object. No sub objects are displayed since there are none.

Press the current object's button. You get an info list in a layer which shows basic information, scroll through the list using the scrollbar at the right side. This info list works for every object. Sometimes you will open it accidently, try to close it by pressing the

button at the bottom of the layer.

We now want a second chimney. Mark the existing one. The button label changes, the marked object's button becomes blue.

We need a place to copy the object to. This must be a Scene. The same scene is a good place.

Link the object to another place. A Scene "C: Chimney" is created. You don't see the copy because the objects are drawn at the same place.

Go there. The scene's object is marked, too. It is the same object controlled by two scenes. If you had pressed you would have created a new object.

Remove the marking.

Open the scene transformation menu. The details are described in the trans-menu. The rulers are grayed out because there is no active matrix.

Press and hold the combobutton to select . It always shows the current state.

( ), twice

Move the second chimney in direction -x. The ruler's input field shows -0.4.

Close the scene matrix editor.

Walk up to see both chimneys.

Open scene surface property editor to switch to grid mode to see the triangulation. Doesn't hurt if grid mode is already active.

/

Click this button on the scene suprop layer until it shows "to patch" indicating the local scene surface property is in grid mode.

Note the surface property layer has updated properly. This Scene doesn't have an own surface property and is displayed using the global surface properties. Automatically create a surface property by pressing

/

Until it shows to patch.

Close the scene surface property editor.

We do not want to walk on the two other Scenes by hand, let's use a utility method.

We want to send the method "all2grid".

Pick the right method in the list.

Click the entry again, that is another way to press .

The roof and the walls should be in grid mode now.

Walk up.

Refine the chimney now.

We want to send the method "refine-global". This is a method of class Triang2d. Because we stay on an instance of Adapt2d, which is subclass of Fe2d, which is subclass of Triang2d, we have to change to the Triang2d methods first.

Click the path to the superclass methods.

Click again to enter the decision.

Click the path to the superclass methods.

Click again to enter the decision. Use the scrollbar at the right side to find the string "refine4".

Pick the right method in the list.

Click the entry again.

Go back to the scene. Note that both chimneys are refined since they are the same object.

We want to remove the extra chimney. Go to the Scene.

Delete the Scene and its object but not the next Scene. Note that the original chimney remains in the Scene.

You stay on now. Refine the rest of the house as well by using the Scene.

You see the valid methods of the class Scene. But Scenes are special, if a Scene does not understand a method it is sent to the sub objects.

"refine4"

Enter the text in the input field and press ENTER.

Both, the roof and the walls are refined.

Create a copy of the roof.

Go to the new copied Scene.

Change the display method only for the roof, which is of class Fe2d. A list in a layer appears, showing the valid display methods for Fe2d.

Choose isoline as display method. The roof is displayed as "temperature isolines".

See one roof with two display methods.

Go to the copy of the roof.

Delete this Scene and its object.

Go to the tree to learn something about time dependent objects.

Walk onto the interpolated object. The object moves to center position in the graphics window because the TimeScene has an own Scene matrix that is unused now.

Go back onto the TimeScene.

ruler

Move the scene time ruler. See the tree growing and shrinking. Note that tree segments appear and disappear, this is done by several TimeSteps.

Go to the chained TimeSteps that are interpolated. The Triang2ds on the right side are the pre-object and the post-object.

Visit the next TimeStep.

Another TimeStep yet.

Go back onto the TimeScene. You do not have to go via the prior TimeSteps.

Move the main time ruler. Nothing happens.

( )

Initialize the time dependency spline.

( )

Open the Spline_Editor to edit the scene time spline, which describes the main time dependency.

Do not edit the spline now, just press

to use the spline. Note the is pressed now. Then press

to close the Spline_Editor.

Move the main time ruler. The scene time ruler moves as well. Note that only main time values between 0 and 1 are valid.

( )

Open the Spline_Editor to edit the scene time spline. Move the little circle at the right side of the left node up to get an S shaped spline.

Move the main time ruler. The scene time ruler moves as well, but not linear any more. Note you do not have to close the Spline_Editor to see the effect. To switch off the spline and to close the editor, press

Let's try an alternative display method.

Open a display method selector layer.

"points" ENTER

Enter the word "points". The house is displayed as points.

Switch to the opts-menu. The display method has put a ruler there.

Play with the ruler to adjust the points size.

Switch back to the manag menu.

Reset the display method.

Click on the default value: display.

Accept the value. You can have a look into the opts menu to see that the ruler disappeared.

Now you have seen something of GRAPE; you may try to add and remove some projects now and see their Buttons and Rulers come and go in the option-menus; for the Projects and their user interfaces see chapter 4.5.

The next sections describe everything in detail.