tom,

short answer,  no.   the attribute on the 'connections' component
called 'element type' controls how to interpolate between the vertices
each element references.   all existing modules support straight line,
linear interpolation.   that's why i spent so much time exploring what
coordinate systems might have straight line interpolations in your data,
for doing analysis in opendx.  but to display your data you have to pick
a sampling density and transform it.

but that doesn't mean that having to sample your circles to render them
is a show-stopping problem.  i understand ned has sent you some macros
which he has used with similar data to make some very nice images.
you have to remember there are a limited number of pixels on the screen.
i'm often surprised at the (low) resolution required to make very nice images.

one last observation.  i could see how you could easily define a new
'element type' attribute which was a circularly symmetric element, so in
that sense the data model could support it.  but it's a hollow victory, because
each module - most notably all the realization and rendering ones - would have
to have code added to them to 'do the right thing' on these new element types.
so more precisely, i'd say the data model could support them, but opendx 
doesn't.

nancy

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