D3PLOT 22.1
Symbol Type: Controlling the Method Used to Draw SPH Elements
Symbol type: controlling the method used to draw SPH elements
| Point | Uses "points" to display elements. These are 2 dimensional squares drawn in the plane of the screen at the appropriate location, and with width and height "radius" x 2.
OpenGL renders "points" extremely fast, meaning that this is an efficient display method if you have many SPH elements; however the symbol has no depth, is not "lit", and there will be a hardware-specific maximum size for a point symbol so it may not show the true size of elements. |
| Cube | Uses a cube of width, height and depth "radius" x 2 to display elements.
This only ever shows 3 faces, so it is reasonably fast to draw, but it looks a bit odd showing a spherical element as a cube. However cubes have depth and orientation, and can be lit, so the result is better-looking that a "point". |
| Sphere | Draws a sphere of the relevant radius, giving a "true" element appearance. However spheres require many facets for rendering, making these slower to draw.
is a value between 1 and 5 which determines the number of facets used to render the sphere symbols. Each increment halves the equatorial and meridional angular increment size, quadrupling the number of facets on the symbol. The default value of 2 gives a good compromise between symbol quality and rendering speed, but you may wish to increase this figure when generating presentation quality images. |
This image shows a "chicken" made of SPH elements striking a flat plate, and demonstrates the default spherical symbols at quality level 2 and their true radius. The SPH elements have been contoured with their radius.