[MOAB-dev] cgm2moab as a script

[Tim Tautges]

On 08/19/2010 12:31 PM, Paul Wilson wrote:
>   Hi Tim,
>
> But this raises questions about what "should" be in a reader and what
> shouldn't. Do we want the CGM reader to include options that are
> specific to DAGMC users? It seems that the following aren't strictly
> functions of a reader:
>
>     * OBB tree generation
>     * Implicit complement generation
>     * Graveyard removal/suppression
>

Correct; I'd been going on your statement about using it for things other than strictly dagmc pre-processing.

- tim

> Paul
>
> On 8/19/2010 4:03 PM, Tim Tautges wrote:
>> But these should all be enabled by options to things like mbconvert,
>> maybe not now, but eventually (since the faceting options to cgm2moab
>> get passed to the cgm reader ultimately).
>>
>> - tim
>>
>> On 08/19/2010 04:13 AM, Paul Wilson wrote:
>>> Hi Steve,
>>>
>>> One reason to use cgm2moab other than strictly for dagmc pre-processing
>>> is to generate a mesh-based geometry representation for visualization
>>> (e.g. in VisIt). This use case will probably make use of any faceting
>>> controls that are exposed in cgm2moab but does NOT require OBB/implicit
>>> complement processing. (... and ideally, will remove the graveyard, but
>>> that should be taken care of by subset manipulations in VisIt,
>>> hopefully).
>>>
>>> Paul
>>>
>>> On 8/17/2010 10:19 PM, Steve Jackson wrote:
>>>> (Note to all: if you use cgm2moab, please read the last paragraph of
>>>> this message.)
>>>>
>>>> On Aug 17, 2010, at 14:18 , Jason Kraftcheck wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Why do you want to make this change at all? Is there any active
>>>>> development
>>>>> on cgm2moab that would be made easier?
>>>> It wouldn't greatly improve the lives of developers in the short term.
>>>> The chief reason to go to a script would be to simplify the code base.
>>>> All else being equal, it's better to have dozens of lines of script
>>>> instead of hundreds of lines of c++. I agree, though, that it's not
>>>> worth introducing a whole scripting setup for MOAB just for this minor
>>>> utility.
>>>>
>>>>> Should we just remove the utility? Is it frequently used? It is a lot
>>>>> simpler to use a more specialized utility as opposed to mbconvert,
>>>>> but is
>>>>> there a sufficient number of users to justify maintaining such a
>>>>> utility in
>>>>> MOAB, installing it for all users, etc. as opposed to just letting
>>>>> users
>>>>> write their own wrapper script?
>>>> To my knowledge, its chief (only?) use in practice is to preprocess
>>>> CAD data for use by dagmc.
>>>>
>>>> Paul and I have discussed extending cgm2moab to optionally do even
>>>> more preprocessing for dagmc (e.g. build and save the OBB tree
>>>> structures, a slow process normally done when dagmc is initialized).
>>>> If we decide to do this, then the question of using a scripting
>>>> language becomes moot, because the new features would require C++. But
>>>> if we do this, then 'cgm2moab' becomes something of a misnomer; I'd be
>>>> tempted to call the program 'dagmc_prep' or similar.
>>>>
>>>> It would be useful to know if anyone is using cgm2moab for purposes
>>>> *other* than dagmc preprocessing. If not, perhaps it should be renamed
>>>> and repurposed as a dagmc preprocessing tool.
>>>> ~S
>>>
>>
>
> --
> Paul Wilson
>
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              Tim Tautges            Argonne National Laboratory
          (tautges at mcs.anl.gov)      (telecommuting from UW-Madison)
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