Re: [Visualpython-users] Advice for a newcomer

[Jay S. <jsh...@gm...>]

(I meant for this to go to the list...my apologies for anyone who
received a second, individual copy of it).

I can see using faces for the contours of the lake.  As part of
another project, some students are taking depth readings, so we'll
have access to a fairly complete set of data for creating faces.  Now
that I've looked at faces, you're right, the lake itself will be much
better looking.  I can see in my mind how the data from the depth
readings could be converted into a set of faces for the contours of
the lake.

I'm still not exactly sure how to use faces for the water level.  The
general approach would seem to be dividing the surface plane into
rectangular regions and using a couple of faces for each rectangle,
but calculating where each of the planes intersects the boundary of
the lake is a bit of a mystery to me right now.  I'll have to dust off
the geometry texts and hunt up the appropriate equations.

Thanks for the suggestion of faces.  The end result, once we figure
how to calculate the intersection of water level with boundary, will
be quite nice.

Jay

On 3/17/07, wsw...@nc... <wsw...@nc...> wrote:
> If you could get a good set of data to describe the boundaries of the
> lake, then you could possibly use the faces object to construct the lake.
> If you need help with this just ask.  It may be a bit more complicated,
> but I think that you would get a better end-result.
>
> William Wright
> NCSU - Aerospace Engineering
>
> > Hello!  I'm teaching a Python programming class to some science
> > students, and have one student who wants to do a project visualizing
> > the level of water in a lake as various other factors change
> > (rainfall, incoming stream volume, etc).
> >
> > I'd originally thought vpython would be a good option for this
> > visualization, but we're having trouble figuring out how to show the
> > level of water in the lake.  What we have so far is drawing the
> > outline of the lake using a string of points and drawing rectangles
> > between pairs of points down to the bed of the lake.
> >
> > Our first try at showing the water level was to use those same points
> > and draw a blue plane (e.g. convex) with them.  That works fine as
> > long as there aren't any concave bits in the lake outline.  Since the
> > lake he wants to model does have concave bits, the water then shows
> > outside the lake walls.
> >
> > Are we missing an easy way of filling a given outline with a color at
> > a particular z depth?  Or of clipping a plane to the outline?
> >
> > Thanks for any advice,
> > Jay
> >
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