Surface Evolver Documentation - Newsletter 20

# Surface Evolver Newsletter no. 20

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                             Surface Evolver Newsletter 20
                                  January 1, 2008
                         by Ken Brakke, brakke@susqu.edu

    Surface Evolver version 2.30 available for download at
    http://www.susqu.edu/brakke/evolver.
    This is the first release since version 2.26 in August, 2005.

    For those who compile Evolver themselves, the same makefile may be used.

    New features in version 2.30:

    Clip view:
      The graphics display now has user-controlled clipping planes, so you
      can see inside your surface.  In the OpenGL graphics window, if you
      hit the 'l' key (lower case 'L'), a clipping plane will appear. Dragging
      the mouse will translate the clipping plane, and hitting 'k' will let you
      rotate the clipping plane.  See "clip view" in the documentation for more.

    Slice view:
      There is also a slice view mode, that works like clip view, except it
      produces a two-dimensional cross-section of the surface.  To initiate it,
      use the "slice_view" toggle command; thereafter the 'l' and 'k' keys
      control the mouse mode.

    Movie viewer:
      For scrolling through stages of an evolution in full 3D fashion, I have
      written a program "evmovie" that reads simple geometry files and makes
      an Evolver-like display, so you can manipulate the surface with the mouse
      (with clipping plane!) and scroll through the files.  It can handle
      hundreds or even thousands of files pretty smoothly.  There is a new
      Evolver command "binary_off_file" for producing files for evmovie.
      To download and see documentation, go to
      http://www.susqu.edu/brakke/evmovie.

    Loading multiple surfaces:
      The "addload" command will load a new datefile without deleting the
      current surface.  Good for building up a surface from several component
      parts, particularly if one componont is repeated in multiple places.
      See the addload_example.fe datafile in the distribution for an example.

    Graphics text:
      You can display simple text in graphics (OpenGL and PostScript graphics,
      anyway). Syntax:

         text_id := display_text(x,y,string)

      The x,y coordinates of the start of the string are in window units, i.e.
      the window coordinates run from (0,0) in the lower left to (1,1) in the
      upper right. The return value should be saved in a variable in case you want
      to delete the text later with delete_text(text_id); even if you don't want to
      delete it, you must have something on the left of the assignment for syntax
      purposes. No font size control or font type or color implemented. Meant for
      captioning images, for example a timer in frames of a movie.

    Showing string facets:
      In the string model, facets will now be displayed according to the
      "show facet where expr" command.  Facets can be colored and picked.
      If the facet edge loop is not closed, then a closing edge will be
      assumed.  May not work too well for non-convex facets.

    Array operations:
      Several basic operations that work on whole arrays have been added
      to the Evolver command language, so scripts can avoid tedious "for"
      loops:

        array := array
        array := scalar
        array := scalar * array
        array := array + array
        array := array - array
        vector dot_product vector

      These work on element attributes that are vectors or arrays, as well
      as stand-alone arrays.  I decided to use "dot_product" as the name of
      the inner product operator instead of just "dot" since I had several
      scripts using "dot" as a variable, and I assume other people do also,
      and I didn't want to break those. There are also matrix_inverse() and
      matrix_determinant() functions.

      NOTE: the matrix_inverse() function is now a function returning 0 for
      singular and 1 for nonsingular matrix, rather than a procedure not
      returning a value. This means that scripts using matrix_inverse() will
      have to assign the return value to a variable.

    Element array attributes:
      For use with the whole-array commands, these element attributes
      are defined as 1-dimensional arrays:
      vertices: __x (coordinates), __p (boundary parameters), __vertex_normal
      edges: __edge_vector
      facets: __facet_normal

    Local names:
      The syntax for declaring identifiers to have local scope has been extended
      to permit multiple names in the same declaration, such as
         local ax,bx,cx,ay,by,by,cx,cy,cz;

    Deeper recursive calls:
      The stack mechanism of the expression interpreter has been modified
      to permit much deeper recursion, for example in geometric search
      algorithms.

    Debugging scripts:
      Several features have been added to help in debugging scripts:

      "subcommand" command: Displays a command prompt and accepts user
       commands.  At "exit", it resumes the script.

      "abort" ends all script execution and returns to the main
       command prompt.

      "breakpoint" can be used to cause a command prompt to appear when
       execution reaches a certain line in a script.  The syntax is
           breakpoint scriptname linenumber
       where scriptname is hte name of the procedure or function and
       linenumber is the line number in the file the procedure is defined in.
       There is also an "unset breakpoint" commmand.

      "whereami" at a subcommand or breakpoint prompt will print a stack
       trace so you can tell where you are in your scripts.

    Expression profiling:
      On systems where Evolver has cpu_counter available and Evolver has been
      compiled with the manifest constant PROF_EVALS defined, the expression
      evaluator inside Evolver keeps track of the clock cycles elapsed during
      each expression evaluation. These expressions include procedures,
      functions, constraint and boundary formulas, content integrands, energy
      integrands, quantity integrands, etc; everything that prints out as code in
      a dump file. The "print profiling" command will print the accumulated CPU
      cycles so far for each type of expression. The times are inclusive of any
      child functions or procedures.  The command reset_profiling will set all
      the cycle values back to 0.

    New named methods:

      dirichlet_elastic: to do conformal mapping by minimizing Dirichlet energy.

      laplacian_mean_curvature: to do motion by the laplacian of the
        mean curvature.

    New toggle:
       function_quantity_sparse: uses sparse matrices with function-type quantities.

    Warning suppression:
      If your datafile or script generates harmless warnings, you can suppress
      particular warnings by number.  Syntax:
         suppress_warning number
         unsuppress_warning number

    Validity checking:
      To help in scripts that want to iterate over constraints or boundaries,
      there are read-only variables high_constraint and high_boundary for the
      maximum constraint and boundary numbers (remember that for named
      constraints and boundaries, the names are synonyms for numbers),
      and there are boolean functions valid_constraint() and valid_boundary()
      that take numbers or names as arguments.

    Autopop and autochop improvements:

      Autopop in the soapfilm model now deletes small facets.

      The immediate_autopop toggle causes deletion of short edges or facets
      to be done immediately on detection before proceeding with detetecting
      further small edges or facets.

      The read-write internal variahle autochop_length can be used to read or
      set the autochop critical length without changing the autochop toggle
      state.

    Edge deletion options:

      Toggle force_deletion will force edge or facet deletion to happen
      even if it creates two edges with the same endpoints.

      Togglw star_fcnagling will refine edges that would otherwise wind
      up with same endpoints due to an edge or facet deleteon.

    End of Newsletter 20