General Module Function
The external_faces module extracts external faces from a 2D or 3D field for rendering. external_faces produces a mesh of only the external faces of each cell set of a data set. Because each cell set’s external faces are created there may be faces that are seemingly internal (vs. external). This is especially true when external faces is used subsequent to a plume_volume module on 3D (volumetric) input.
Module Input Ports
external_faces has one input port which can accept data from most other modules. plume_volume and Explode_and_Scale are commonly connected to the input port of external_faces.
Module Output Ports
external_faces has two output ports, the first of which (closest to the left) outputs a data field that can be input to other Subsetting and Processing modules. Data output from this port will contain a new unstructured cell data set representing the geometry of the external faces only. If nodal data was present in the data before entering external_faces, the first component will be preserved in the output field. 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_faces is shown in the figure above.
The Color By 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) nodal data component. If Solid Color is selected the output field will have no data but the red output port object will be colored by the Object Color button.
You can also choose to extract a single scalar component of a vector data component.
The component selected affects only renderable geometry output from this module, the data field that is out will contain all of the data components.
The Remove Normals Generation toggle controls how vertices and edges are rendered. When this is ON, it makes more distinct edges, but a more faceted overall surface.
The Culling Mode toggle controls whether back facing surface are visible. Generally you will want this ON when making the object(s) transparent.
The Transparency slider determines the opacity of the objects.
Related Modules