Re: VisAD for my application?

• To: Gary Hennigan <glhenni@xxxxxxxxxx>
• Subject: Re: VisAD for my application?
• From: "From: Bill Hibbard <hibbard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>" <billh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 16:04:11 -0500 (CDT)

Hi Gary,

VisAD can offer you help with your application. Use the
visad/bom/RubberBandBoxRendererJ3D.java class in your
application to let users draw rectangles. See the main()
method in this class to see how it can trigger your code
in a doAction() method of a CellImpl. Your code would
construct a rectangle and perhaps other shapes as a
Gridded2DSet with manifold dimension = 1 or a UnionSet
of Gridded2DSets with manifold dimension = 1 (typically
used for drawing map outlines and other shapes using
lines). It could also create Text objects for plotting
text in your display. Run:

  java visad.bom.RubberBandBoxRendererJ3D

to see how it works. Your code in a CellImpl.doAction()
method can also check consistency conditions among a set
of rectangles. You'll need to use Java3D, but to see your
graphics in a 2-D box, construct your Display with:

  new DisplayImplJ3D("display", new TwoDDisplayRendererJ3D());

Good luck and let us know if you have other questions,
Bill
----------------------------------------------------------
Bill Hibbard, SSEC, 1225 W. Dayton St., Madison, WI  53706
hibbard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  608-263-4427  fax: 608-263-6738
http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/vis.html


On 20 Aug 2001, Gary Hennigan wrote:

> I'm new to the Java graphics world and I'm trying to decide on the
> right approach to take for my application. It's fairly simple. I have
> some 2D cross sections that I'd like to allow the user to
> layout in relation to each other. The display will be very much like a
> blueprint. Here's sort of a rough picture using boxes:
> 
> 
>         -------------------------------------------------
>         |                                               |
>         |                                               |
>         |               -----------------               |
>         |               |               |               |
>         |               |    #3         |               |
>         |               |               |               |
>         |               -----------------               |
>         |               |               |               |
>         |               |<----- d3 ---->|               |
>         |                                               |
>         |                                               |
>         |       ---------------------------------       |
>         |       |                               |       |
>         |       |            #2                 |       |
>         |       |                               |       |
>         |       ---------------------------------       |
>         |       |                               |       |
>         |       |<------------- d2 ------------>|       |
>         |                                               |
>         |                    #1                         |
>         |                                               |
>         -------------------------------------------------
>         |                                               |
>         |<---------------------- d1 ------------------->|
> 
> 
> The idea is to annotate the drawing with dimensions and let the user
> click on those annotations to modify them and, of course, check that
> some simple rules aren't violated given the input value. In the above
> example each of #1, 2, 3 would have a width annotation, examples of
> which are the d1, d2, and d3 shown above, as well as other annotations
> not shown above such as height and separation of the objects from each
> other, etc.
> 
> At first I thought this would be pretty simple to do with just Java2D
> but then I found VisAD with things like zooming, cursor tracking, and
> 3D capabilities that are pretty much ready for prime time. While I
> don't have an immediate need for 3D that is in the plans for the
> future.
> 
> Is VisAD overkill for this application? Should I just start with
> Java2D and go from there? Any opinons welcome.
> 
> Thanks,
> Gary Hennigan
> 
> 

• References:
  • VisAD for my application?
    • From: Gary Hennigan