OOF2: The Manual

4.7.8. The Mesh Info Toolbox
	4.7. Toolboxes

4.7.8. The Mesh Info Toolbox

The Mesh Info Toolbox displays information about the topmost Mesh Layer in the Canvas. It works more or less like the Skeleton Info Toolbox, except that it has only two modes, Element and Node, and has a button for creating a Data Viewer.

Figure 4.14 depicts the Mesh Info Toolbox. The two buttons at the top, labelled Element and Node determine the Toolbox's operating mode and what information will be displayed when the mouse is clicked on the the Canvas. Below the mode buttons are boxes that show the coordinates of the mouse click, in physical units.

Figure 4.14. The Mesh Info Toolbox

In both Element and Node modes, the queried Mesh component is highlighted in the Canvas. The Clear button at the bottom of the Toolbox erases the highlighting and clears the data listing. The Prev and Next buttons on either side cycle through the previously selected objects (changing the Toolbox mode, if necessary).

Element Mode

In Element mode, the Element being queried is highlighted with a blue perimeter,^[12] as shown in the figure. The following data is displayed in the Toolbox:

The Element's index. This is just an integer used to identify the Element. All of the Elements in a Mesh have a unique index.
The Element's type. Element types are discussed in Element3 (triangles) and Element4 (quadrilaterals).
A list of the Nodes of the Element. Two types of Nodes are listed. Nodes identified simply as “Node” determine the shape of the Element, but do not carry Field values. Nodes marked “FuncNode” (for “Function Node”) have Field values defined at them. The index and position (in physical coordinates) of each Node are listed as well.

Clicking on a Node in the list highlights it with a pink dot^[12] in the Canvas. Double-clicking switches the Toolbox into Node Mode, and displays the data for the double-clicked Node.
The Material assigned to the Element.

Node Mode

In Node mode, the Node being queried is highlighted in the Canvas with a blue dot.^[12] The following data is displayed in the Toolbox:

The Node's index. This is just an integer identifier.
The Node's type, as explained above.
The position of the Node, in physical coordinates.

The Data Viewer

The value of Fields and Fluxes and other Mesh-dependent quantities are not given in the Mesh Info Toolbox, because there wouldn't be room for all of them. The New Data Viewer button in the Toolbox opens a Data Viewer window, which can be set to display numerically any quantity that can be plotted in an OOF2 contour plot. Any number of Data Viewers may be open at one time. Clicking the mouse in the Canvas while the Mesh Info Toolbox is open will update the information in all Data Viewers that belong to that Canvas, unless the viewer is frozen (see below).

Figure 4.15. The Mesh Data Viewer

Figure 4.15 shows what the Data Viewer looks like. At the top of the window is a triangle labelled Source, which can be clicked to show and hide the following widgets, all of which conspire to determine what data will be displayed:

A pull-down menu labelled Source Window that lists all of the available Graphics Windows. The Viewer gets its information from the selected Graphics Window.
A Mesh box indicating which Mesh is the source of the data. It will always be the topmost Mesh displayed in the Canvas of the Source Window.
Two position boxes that give the physical coordinates of the mouse click. The text in these boxes can be edited by hand, in case you didn't click exactly where you wanted to on the Canvas.
A grayed-out time box that displays the Mesh time when the data was computed. This cannot be edited directly, because doing so would require that the Mesh data be interpolated to a new time at each keystroke. To change the time, click the Edit button to the right of the box. The button will metamorphose into a Done button and the box will no longer be grayed out (but the rest of the window will be). Type the new time, and click Done. Entering a new time in this way will automatically freeze the window's time.
A set of pull-down menus labelled Output that specify what quantity will be displayed in response to mouse clicks on the Canvas.

Figure 4.16 shows the Data Viewer window in its collapsed state. (After collapsing the widgets, it's unfortunately necessary to resize the window by hand.)

Figure 4.16. The Mesh Data Viewer, Collapsed

Below the Output menus is a region for displaying the output values. The size and format of this region varies according to the type of Output. At the bottom of the window are two checkboxes and two buttons.

When the Space checkbox in the Freeze frame is checked, the data displayed in the window will not be updated when a new location is selected by clicking the mouse on the Canvas.
When the Time checkbox in the Freeze frame is checked, the data displayed in the window will not be updated when the time of the Mesh displayed in the Canvas changes.
The Clone button creates an identical copy of the Data Viewer window.
The Close button simply closes the Data Viewer window.

^[12] The color and size of the decorations used to highlight the queried Elements and Nodes may be changed by editing the MeshInfoDisplay display Layer. This Layer is predefined and always displays the topmost Mesh. It will be necessary to enable List All Layers in the Settings menu in order to edit the Layer.


4.7. Toolboxes		4.8. The Layer Editor