Karl, Much of the functionality you are looking for is available in a beta DX application I have released (GeoMoVie; http://www-wsm.physik.uni-karlsruhe.de/pub/geomovie/WSM_GeoMoVie_v1.0b1. zip). This is designed for visualizing stress data from finite element results calculated for geological volumes. Much of the app deal with plotting geologically specific data types (delta CFS etc.) however one part of it maps the volumetric data onto arbitary (ie geological) surfaces defined from meshed surfaces. Another part polts only the surfaces which is what you are looking for. Off list I will send you a small app, with most of the surface handling features, that I use to verify the surfaces meshes and a demo file of the Rhine Graben (2MB).
With regards to data numbers. I have used FE meshes with 18 variables at 3-400k nodes sucessfully on 1GB XP machines so you may not need to remove your attributes. Although if you only want the surfaces then this will certainly help. Peter -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Karl Pohlmann Sent: 09 October 2004 01:26 To: OpenDX-Users Subject: [opendx-users] Visualizing subsurface geologic units Hi, Has anyone used DX to visualize 3-D subsurface geologic units, a la EarthVision? I've discretized a pretty detailed geologic model and treated the array as connection-dependent so as to produce a volume of colored cells for visualization. However, this is very inefficient because the array can easily be too large for DX to handle on my machine (linux, Athlon, 1GB memory). And I can't reduce the resolution of the data set without losing important detail. It seems that it would be much more efficient to convert each geologic unit (they are fairly continuous in space, i.e. mainly layers) to some sort of volume defined only by the geometry of its outer surfaces. This would eliminate all the interior data which are redundant anyway. Another alternative might be to simply use a "fence diagram"; that is, a series of cross sectional slices oriented in several directions, but a lot of information would be lost using this approach. Any comments and/or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks, Karl Pohlmann -- Karl Pohlmann Associate Research Hydrogeologist Division of Hydrologic Sciences Desert Research Institute 755 East Flamingo Road, Las Vegas, NV 89119 Phone: 702-862-5485 Fax: 702-862-5427 _____________________________________ Dr Peter Connolly World Stress Map @ Geophysical Institute University of Karlsruhe Hertzstrasse 16 76185 Karlsruhe Germany tel +49 (0)721 6084593 fax +49 (0)721 71173 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http:\\www.world-stress-map.org
