Domain Editor

Mouse modes

In Grid, the user has different mouse modes to accomplish his tasks. There are 4 types of tasks you can accomplish with the mouse

  1. Selecting domain items
  2. Controlling the view port
  3. Creating domain items
  4. Assigning properties to domain items.

To edit a domain you usually use the mouse. The left button is the action button which let's you perform the actions for the current mouse mode. The right button opens the context menu (which is of couse different for the different mouse modes). In some mouse modes you can use the middle mouse button as a shortcut for function which require the left mouse button along with the Control or Shift key. You can also access the context menu by pressing Space.

Selection Mode Selection Mode

To select single domain items, one can simply click on them. To select multiple domain items, click and hold the left mouse button until the box surrounds all items you want to select. Holding Shift allows you to select additional items, holding Control to unselect items.

The selected items can be moved around by pressing and holding the middle button while moving the mouse around. Hold Control to enforce horizontal or vertical movement.

The context menu offers some possibilities to change the selection:

Another use of the context menu is the construction of the meshes. To create edges, select two or more nodes and choose one of the Add Edges entries from the menu. The Add Edges function comes in multiple variants:

Fanwise adding of edges Stripwise adding of edges

Tris and quads can be created quite easily. Select the edges which should be joined and the program will automatically find out which ones can be combined to the chosen form. For quads there is a shortcut: select 4 nodes and choose Add Quads (2D). Grid will then automatically arrange the four selected nodes such that they make up a quad.

Tetras and hexas are created from Tri3Ds and Quad3Ds. Just select all faces which should be combined to a tetra or hexa and Grid automatically combines them.

The Operations submenu gives access to some more or less complex operations one can use to manipulate the domain:

The Transform Dialog

View Mode View Mode

The view mode can be used to manipulate the camera with the mouse. The left mouse button can be used to move the camera around. To rotate the camera you can hold Control while dragging the mouse.

As always the context menu offers some useful functions in the context of the mouse mode:

Zoom Mode Zoom Mode

In the zoom mode you can draw a box around the area you want to zoom into. The middle mouse button can be used to zoom out.

Move Mode Move Mode

Hold the left mouse button and move the mouse around to move all selected items to a new position. Use Control to enforce horizontal or vertical movement.

Point Mode Point Mode

In the point mode, different type of nodes can be placed in the domain by clicking with the left mouse button. The target point of the camera is taken as reference point for the translation from the screen position to the position in 3D. To place a point at the x-y-plane at z=200 one has to set the camera position to something like (0,0,-100) with target point (0,0,200) with the camera button Camera Button in the toolbar.

The context menu can be used to set which type of points are placed:

Segment List Mode Segment List Mode

Segment lists are quite complex. In their simplest form, they are polygons. Depending on the direction of the segment list (counterclockwise or clockwise), they include or exclude the area they enclose. Instead of lines one can also use circle segments or NURBS. The process of creating a segment list is always the same. At first, the control points for the "polygon" are placed by clicking into the editor with the left mouse button. Then the control point type can be changed by right clicking on it and choosing the new type from the context menu.

The different point types can also be placed directly, by holding the Shift key for counterclockwise circles or the Control key for NURBS control points. To add the segment list to the domain, you can click the Done! entry in the context menu or double click one of the control points.

Points can also be moved by dragging them around with the left mouse button pressed. Clicking on the small circles on the lines connecting the control points creates a new control point at that position. The context menu offers some additional manipulation tools for the segment list:

The functions which target a specific point use the mouse position at the time of the activation of the popup menu as reference. So you have to move the mouse over the point you want to manipulate and then open the context menu with the middle mouse button or Space.

Segment List Mode

Clockwise Circle Mode Counterclockwise Circle Mode Clockwise/Counterclockwise Circle Mode

The circle mode is used to create circle boundaries. Normally, circle boundaries run from 0 to 1 with 0 at the twelve o'clock position. A circle can be placed with two clicks: the first sets the center point, the second the radius.

To change the parameter interval of a circle use the quick edit feature or the domain browser.

Sphere Mode Sphere Mode

Spheres can be created in the sphere mouse mode. Just click once to set the center of the sphere, then move the mouse until the radius fits and press the mouse again.

Rectangular Mode Make Rectangular Mode

This mouse mode can be used to make quads rectangular with one click. Just click into the corner of the quad which shall be rectangular and the coordinates are adjusted to this.

Block Painting Mode Block Painting Mode

The block painting mode can be used to quickly assign matrix- or parallelblock numbers to quad elements. The context menu can be used to determine what number and what type of number to set. Then this number can be easily assigned to the quads elements by clicking on them. If you use the feast rendering style (from the preferences dialog), you can immediately see the changes.

Anisotropy Setting Mode Anisotropy Setting Mode

In this mode, you can click into quads, to set its refinement direction. Just click near the edge or corner and the parameters will be correctly set. Click into the center of the quad to set the refinement mode to "None".

Proportional Node Editing Mode Proportional Node Editing

In the proportional node editing mode you can move points around as you are doing in the move mode. The difference is that along with the point in the center the points in the surrounding circle are also moved, but only proportionally to their distance to the point in the center. The radius of the circle can be changed with the mouse wheel.

Side note: Quick edit

Quick edit is a feature of the domain editor. Just hover the mouse over the item you want to edit and press the Return key. A dialog appears in which the values for the item can be entered. If multiple items are at that position, the correct can be chosen from a popup menu.

Preferences for the Domain Editor

In the preferences dialog, many different setting can be changed for the domain editor. The settings are categorized and distributed over different tabs. To apply your settings without closing the dialog, one can press the Apply button. Ok does the same and closes the dialog whereas Close closes the dialog without applying the changes. Sets of setting can be loaded and saved in files using the Load scheme... and Save scheme... buttons. Defaults resets to the factory defaults.

To use the settings of an editor as default for all newly opened editors, one can save these by clicking on the Save defaults entry in the Domain menu. This does not change the factory defaults.

Sometimes during a version change it may occur that new options were added to the dialog. This can result in a strange or even wrong display of your domains. If this happens, you should delete the file g3ddefaults.xml from the directory in which devisor saves its settings. On Un*x platforms this is the directory .devisor in your homedir. On Windows it is placed in the directory devisor in your "My Documents" folder.

In the items tab, you can choose which types of domain items are drawn. Additionally, some hints on the structure can be displayed:

In the numbers tab, one can choose of which domain items the numbers are displayed. For quad elements, four numbers are shown: element number, matrixblock and parallelblock number.

The colours tab provides access to the colour and line style settings for the domain items. Usually, all domain items of one type have the same colour. This is different only for the boundaries. Boundaries get their colour according to their number. The first boundary gets the first boundary colour, the second get the second colour and so on. When all colours are used they begin with the first again. The lower two boxes are used for the FEAST rendering mode. Here you can determine the linestyles and colors used to display the parallelblock and matrixblock informations.

The cutplane tab allows you to define cutplanes. Only items on that cutplane will be displayed in the editor. For the definition of the cutplane two parameters have to be defined. The first is the axis which the cutplane is orthogonal to and the second is the offset for the plane on that axis. Additionally, one can give a parameter epsilon which allows you to include items which are not further than epsilon units away from the cutplane.

On the snapping tab, mouse snapping can be set up. There are basically three options. Turn mouse snapping off completely, snap uniformly or snap on grid. Choosing an uniform snap of 0.1 lets you only place nodes at x-, y- and z-coordinates which are multiples of 0.1. Grid snapping does basically the same, but you can choose different snap factors for the three axis and define the origin and extent of the grid. Only the selected grid is used for grid snapping and is displayed in the editor. When no grid is selected, no snapping is applied.

On the misc tab, the paths to external programs like Trigen and Metis can be set. One can also turn off the statusbar of the domain editor and choose how many subdivisions are used to approximate NURBS and circles.

Preferences - Items Preferences - Numbers Preferences - Colours Preferences - Cutplanes Preferences - Snapping Preferences - Misc Preferences - Add Grid