another iMesh / fields issue we may want to consider.

[Carl Ollivier-Gooch]

On 10-05-07 06:24 AM, Mark Shephard wrote:
> At the boot camp there was extensive discussion on the issue of where
> mesh shape information and coordinate information goes. There was
> general consensus that if we were starting at square one all of this
> would be in fields. However, because where iMesh is already, that what
> "is in iMesh" will remain there, but that fields will be able to fully
> support all mesh shape and coordinate information.

See below.

> The item I wanted to mention here is that there was a couple of side
> comments on the "higher order node stuff" including, if I recall
> correctly, Tim asking if what we had defined could be revisited. With
> all the other stuff we were discussing at the boot camp we did not go
> any deeper into that and I was wondering if we should. I know that Carl
> and Luo had worked pretty hard on getting something into iMesh for
> higher order nodes that attempted to address the concerns of Tim and
> SCOREC. However, I am not sure how much of that was implemented and/or
> how happy people were with the compromise.

I'm pretty sure no one ever implemented any of it, unless it was someone 
at SCOREC.  I know I didn't, and I don't think Tim did, either.

> If the above is the situation with respect to this issue, the question I
> would ask is as follows: Should we consider having iMesh support just
> the coordinate information originally defined and have what we do in the
> fields stuff deal with all the additional possibilities?

One of the pieces of homework I have from the bootcamp is to look at the 
pros and cons of keeping linear mesh shape in iMesh versus moving 
everything to iField.  Once we have that analysis in front of us, we can 
decide what to do about that.

I don't see any future in putting the curved mesh shape stuff into 
iMesh, considering it would need to provide much the same functionality 
as iField does.  There is almost certainly some stuff in that API that 
we can mine (especially the p-version stuff), I just haven't had a 
chance to look at what things can be transferred / generalized.

So in the end, I think the answer will almost certainly turn out to be 
that fancy coordinate stuff will all happen in iField.  Whether simple 
coordinate stuff will also be supported in iMesh is an open question.

Carl

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Dr. Carl Ollivier-Gooch, P.Eng.                   Voice: +1-604-822-1854
Associate Professor                                 Fax: +1-604-822-2403
Department of Mechanical Engineering             email: cfog at mech.ubc.ca
University of British Columbia              http://www.mech.ubc.ca/~cfog
Vancouver, BC  V6T 1Z4                  http://tetra.mech.ubc.ca/ANSLab/
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