General Module Function
The external_edges module produces a wireframe representation of of an unstructured cell data mesh. This is generally used to visualize the skeletal shape of the data domain while viewing output from other modules, such as plume_volumes and isosurfaces, inside the unstructured mesh. external_edges produces a mesh of only the external edges which meet the edge angle criteria below for each cell set of a data set. Because each cell set's external faces are used there may be edges that are seemingly internal (vs. external). This is especially true when external edges is used subsequent to a plume_volume module on 3D (volumetric) input.
Module Input Ports
external_edges has one input port, which can accept unstructured mesh data. The mesh data may contain nodal data.
Module Output Ports
external_edges has two output ports, the first of which (closest to the left) outputs a new unstructured mesh which contains line cell types, representing the external edges, and nodal data corresponding to the nodal data in the input unstructured data. The second port outputs a renderable geometry directly to the Viewer. This red port will be colored by the selected Data Component (see below).
Module Control Panel
The control panel for external_edges is shown in the figure above.
The Max Edge Angle available range is 0 to 180 degrees and the default is 25 degrees. Setting Max Edge Angle to 0 causes all external cell (element) edges in the model to be visible. This angle is defined as the angle between two faces or cells in the model. Intersections between faces or cells with angles greater than the Max Edge Angle are visible. Exterior model edges are always visible.
The Data Component radio button list contains all of the data components piped into the input port. Only one component can be selected at a time and the default selection is the first (0th) data component. This component selection is used only to select which data to display from this module. Any modules downstream of external_edges will receive all of the nodal data components. If the Remove All Data toggle is selected the resulting edges will be colored according to the Object Color.
You can also choose to extract a single scalar component of a vector data component, with the Vector Component Slider.
Related Modules