7.1 Using Readers

This section describes the use of SCIRun's reader modules to read text-based data.

Control dialogs for all reader modules are similar. They contain a file type popup menu that selects the type (binary or text) of file to read as input. The dialog's file browser is used to choose a file. Figure 7.1 shows the control dialog for module MatrixReader. When reading a SCIRun matrix file, item SCIRun Matrix File (*.mat) is selected from the file type popup menu. When reading a text-based matrix file then one of TextDenseMatrix (*.*) or TextSparseRowMatrix (*.*) is selected from the file type popup menu depending on the type of matrix stored in the text file.

Figure 7.1: MatrixReader's dialog

 

When reading unstructured field data from a text file, module FieldReader reads data from a node coordinate file and a separate node connectivity file. However only one of the files is chosen with the file browser. FieldReader assumes the other file's name differs only in its extension.

Module FieldReader can read only field geometry (node coordinate and node connectivity) data from text files. Module MatrixReader is used to read field data values. Module ManageFieldData is used to merge field geometry data (from module FieldReader) with field data values to form a complete filed. Figure 7.2 shows the arrangement of these three modules.

Figure 7.2: Network that reads text-based field data