OOF2: The Manual

Field
	8.6.1. Field, Flux, and Equation Classes

Name

Field — Base class for fields

Synopses

(Only those methods useful when extending OOF2 are listed here.)

C++ Synopsis

#include "engine/field.h"
	  class Field {
  const std::string& name() const;
  int ndof() const;
  virtual IteratorP iterator(Planarity planarity) const;
  bool is_defined(const CSubProblem* subproblem) const;
  bool is_active(const CSubProblem* subproblem) const;
  virtual DegreeOfFreedom* operator()(const FuncNode* node,
                                      int component) const;
  DegreeOfFreedom* operator()(const FuncNode& node,
                              int component) const;
  DegreeOfFreedom* operator()(const ElementFuncNodeIterator& node,
                              int component) const;
  double value(const FuncNode* node,
               int component) const;
  double value(const ElementFuncNodeIterator& node,
               int component) const;
  virtual OutputValue output(const ElementFuncNodeIterator& node) const;
  virtual OutputValue output() const;
}

Python Synopsis

from oof2.SWIG.engine.field import Field
	  class Field:
  def ndof(self)
  def is_defined(self, mesh)
  def is_active(self, mesh)
  def iterator(self, planarity)
  def value(self, node, component)

Subclasses

Source Files

SRC/engine/field.h: C++ header
SRC/engine/field.C: C++ code
SRC/engine/field.swg: SWIG source code
SRC/engine/field.spy: python code included in field.swg.

Description

Field is a base class for all types of fields in OOF2. The role of fields is described in Section 2.5.3. Like Fluxes and Equations, Field instances are global objects — there is one instance for each physical field. Fields store information about the physical field (such as its name and dimension), but do not store the actual values of the Field. That's done by a Mesh, by using bookkeeping data from a Field.

Most of the programming interface for Fields is defined in the base class, which is an abstract C++ class. Most of the API is available from both C++ and Python.

Most of the Field objects encountered by OOF2 users and extenders are actually instances of the CompoundField class, which pairs the in-plane and out-of-plane parts of a Field, both of which are Fields themselves. All operations on a CompoundField operate on the in-plane part, unless specifically noted otherwise.

Methods

`std::string & name() const`

name returns the name assigned to the Field when it was created. See Section 8.1.

`int ndof() const`

ndof returns the number of degrees of freedom in the Field. This is the number of data values that must be allocated to store the Field at each Node of the Mesh. For CompoundFields, ndof returns the size of the in-plane part.

`IteratorP iterator(Planarity p)`

iterator returns an IteratorP object which can be used to loop over all of the degrees of freedom of a Field. For example, the following code snippet zeros the values of a Field on a node:

Field field;                   // Assume that this has been set.
ElementFuncNodeIterator node;  // This too.
FEMesh *mesh;                  // And this.
for(IteratorP i=field.iterator(ALL_INDICES); !i.end(); ++i) {
  DegreeOfFreedom *dof = field(mesh, node, i);
  dof->value() = 0.0;
}

`bool is_defined(const FEMesh *mesh) const`

is_defined indicates whether the Field has been defined on the given FEMesh. Defined Fields have been assigned values on Nodes.

`bool is_active(const FEMesh *mesh) const`

is_active indicates whether the Field has been activated on the given FEMesh. Active Fields are being solved for.

`DegreeOfFreedom *operator()(...) const`

DegreeOfFreedom *operator()(const FuncNode*, int component) const;
DegreeOfFreedom *operator()(const FuncNode&, int component) const;
DegreeOfFreedom *operator()(const ElementFuncNodeIterator&, int component) const;
DegreeOfFreedom *operator()(const ElementFuncNodeIterator&, const IteratorP&) const;

This family of methods are all ways of obtaining the value of a Field at the given Node. The different methods are provided for convenience, to allow different representations of Nodes or Field components. All of these methods return a pointer to a DegreeOfFreedom object, which wraps the actual Field component value and is stored at the Node.

DegreeOfFreedoms are low-level, fairly primitive objects, so these methods cannot be used to extract aggregate values (such as all of the components of a multicomponent Field). To do that, see Field::output.

These functions only return Field values at Nodes. To get values interpolated at an arbitrary point within an Element, see Element::outputField.

`double value(node, component)`

The value function is a shortcut for evaluating a component of a Field at a Node. In C++, the given node must be a FuncNode pointer or a ElementFuncNodeIterator reference. In Python, it must be a FuncNode object.

`OutputValue output(...) const`

OutputValue output(const ElementFuncNodeIterator&) const;
OutputValue output(const FuncNode&) const = 0;

These functions return an OutputValue object which wraps an OutputVal object which contains the value of the Field at the given Node. These calls are mostly used as a mechanism for generically transferring Field values to Python when plotting data, but they can also be useful when writing Field-dependent Propertys.

The output functions differ from Field::operator() by returning all of the components of a multi-dimensional Field in one call.


8.6. OOF2 Class and Function Reference		CompoundField