Best way to import 3D files and link its objects with metadata?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg116728] Best way to import 3D files and link its objects with metadata?
- From: fonseca <public at fonseca.info>
- Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2011 06:35:48 -0500 (EST)
Hi, I have a Mathematica program that imports CAD dxf files that contain skeletons of a pipe network, in 3D (3D representation of the axes of a network of pipes). With Mathematica I first transform the dxf information into a graph type information (detecting line connections, etc), to which I do a series of calculations. My problem is that before I can do the calculation, I have to enter other type of data, like flow rates getting out at each end, pipe diameters of each edge, etc. I do this, by hand, with lists of rules, entered by hand into Mathematica. This is very time consuming, since each time I change a little my network (the dxf 3d file), I have to redo this association again (I have no way of knowing if a moved/changed line still represents the same pipe as before, and so it gets automatically a new name for its graph edges). Questions: 1) Do you know if it is possible to associate metadata to each element on the dxf file, and then import this metadata to Mathematica? Like that I would fill in this kind of information on the CAD system... 2) Do you know of a better way of associating alpha-numeric data to graph edges, without having to print the network very very big, so that I can distinguish the names of all the nodes, and then produce a list of rule by hand (GraphEdit could almost help, if it had a little more functionality...)? Thank you, P. Fonseca