CSGobj_v2

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This is a class which stores the geometric features of the domain. The primary purpose of this class is to read shapefiles or structures that are similar to matlab's shapefiles and create a constructive geometry object.

Contents

The typical flow for creating a mesh with mSim is the following:

  1. Create an empty object using the constructor CSGobj_v2 of this class.
  2. Read the shapefiles using readshapefile or readShapefiles_withArc method. After this it make sense to use plotCSGobj method to display the content of CSG.
  3. Next write the .geo file using *writegeo method.
  4. Generate the mesh by running the runGmsh method

CSG = CSGobj_v2(Dim, Npoly, Nline, Npoints, usertol)

To create a CSGobj_v2 object the following input arguments are required:

Dim: This is the dimension of the geometry. (Currently only 2D is suported)

Npoly: The number of polygons which expected to be in the object. Note: This is used only to allocate space for the polygons and is not very important. However a wrong estimation might slow dow the code considerably.

Nline: Number of lines which expected to be in the CSG object. See also the note on Npoly input argument

Npoints: Number of points which is expected to be in the object. See also the note on Npoly input argument.

usertol: This sets the tolerance. Two points closer than usertol will be treated as identical.

plotCSGobj(CSG,ln_cl,pnt_cl,lnw)

This method is used to plot the current content of the CSG object.

It can be used without arguments, however optionaly one can define the following arguments for more customized plots

ln_cl: line color (default: blue). Similar rules to color specifications apply here.

pnt_cl : point color (default red)

lnw: line weight. (default 1.5)

CSG=readShapefiles_withArc(CSG, nonpointlist, pointlist, tempname)

This method is used to read the shapefile using ArcGIS. This is recommended when the geometries are very complex and the number of features (lines, polygons, points) is greater than 10,000. However because it requires ArcGIS license we have tested this method only on one machine.

This methods requires a slightly complicated configuration because what happens is that matlab will pass the input arguments to a python script which in turn will execute a sequence of ArcGIS commands. As for the time of writing the documentation Matlab does not provide a script to call python. Yet it provides a perl script. In mSim we copied and renamed the perl.m to msim_python.m In msim_python.m function you need to provide the arc python directory.

nonpointlist: a list of polygons and/or polyline shapefiles. This should be an array of cells.

pointlist: a list of point shapefiles. THis should be an array of cells.

tempname: The arcGis commands create several intermediate files. However when a shapefile already exists in a directory ArcGIS returns an error. To avoid this we append the prefix given by the tempname to all intermediate files. Before we start the script the method will delete all files starting with tempname. So it is important to give something uncommon for the working direcotry.

CSG=readshapefile(CSG,SH)

This method appends the given shapefile to the CSG object.

SH: is a matlab structure for shape files. The required fields here are the Geometry, X, Y. It is always assumed that the first shapefile which is passed to an empty CSG object describes the domain.

runGmsh(CSG,filename, gmsh_exe, Nsub)

Executes the gmsh program, which generates the mesh. The program is executed in batch mode and the output of gmsh is printed on matlab command window.

filename: is the *.geo input file for gmsh. The filename must be given without the extension *.geo. The results will be written to a file with the same filename and extension *.msh

gmsh_exe: is the full path of the executable.

showGmsh(CSG,filename,gmsh_exe,type)

Starts the Gmsh GUI which loads the model described in filename. This function is usefull because one cal visualize the mesh without reading it into matlab workspace. WHile Gmsh GUI is open matlab will appear as busy.

filename: is the input file

gmsh_exe: is the full path of the executable.

type: is either 'geo' or 'msh'. In geo case gmsh loads the geometry file and in 'msh' case loads the mesh file.

writegeo(CSG,filename,opt)

Writes the data of CSG object to *.geo format.

filename: is the .geo input file for gmsh. This will create or modify the file filename.geo.

opt: a structure with mesh options. msim_mesh_options for details

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