[Smtk-developers] Auxiliary geometry branch

[David Thompson]

Hi all,

There's now a branch named aux-geom in my (dcthomp's) smtk and cmb repos on gitlab. It includes the following changes:

1. The VTK model multiblock source now has top-level blocks that organize entities by the dimension of their geometric locus. This greatly improves the visual quality of renderings and image-baselines for tests are much more repeatable.
2. A new entity type, AuxiliaryGeometry, is available. Each instance is intended to represent
   a. Scene geometry to be loaded from a file (when a "url" string property is set); ** or **
   b. Construction, datum, and/or preview geometry (when a Tessellation is associated).
3. Descriptive phrases now include auxiliary geometry instances owned by a model.
4. A new operator "add auxiliary geometry" is available in all sessions that creates an auxiliary geometry instance and assigns it to a parent model.

Limitations include

+ Selections in the 3d view and model-browser list-view will not work until ModelBuilder is updated to use a vtkDataObjectTreeIterator with the flat index stored in the UUID->block_id map.
+ The file types support for auxiliary geometry is currently limited to obj, vtp, vti, vtu, and vtm.
+ Dropdowns in the operator panel do not allow you to select auxiliary geometry as an item value yet.
+ The "add auxiliary geometry" operator cannot yet create hierarchical auxiliary geometry (i.e., auxiliary geometry that is a child of something other than the model) due to the above and other issues.
+ Entity, Group, and Volume coloring do not appear to work. Group coloring definitely requires further effort as the method for enumerating model entities in the multiblock source has been changed.
+ Image and other non-polygonal data will be loaded but not rendered. Changes are needed for the composite mapper in order for this to be supported. Ken has outline how to make them and thinks it will be about a week of effort.

A picture is attached for your viewing pleasure. :-)

	David

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://public.kitware.com/pipermail/smtk-developers/attachments/20161007/0222bf5d/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Screen Shot 2016-10-07 at 5.32.23 PM.png
Type: image/png
Size: 573250 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://public.kitware.com/pipermail/smtk-developers/attachments/20161007/0222bf5d/attachment-0001.png>