April 2008 Archives

A customer modeling molecules wanted to toggle on/off zones representing chemical elements.  We have a pattern matching tool in the Zone Style dialog -- see diagram at right -- but each use is about four clicks.  Would there be an easier way to toggle these on and off?

This is what I came up with, and it can be called from the Quick Macro Panel:

import TecUtil
import TecVals
import re
import string

#
# This function toggles the named zones on or off depending on the
# pattern provided.  If you specify "all," it applies to all zones.
#
def toggle_zones(zonename, onoff):
   if onoff == "off":
       setto = TecVals.AssignOp_MinusEquals
   else:
       setto = TecVals.AssignOp_PlusEquals

   n=CountFieldmaps()
   #
   # count through fieldmaps
   #
   Results = []
   tmp = []
   for i in xrange(1,n+1):
      Results = TecUtil.ZoneGetName(i)
      if (re.compile(zonename).search(Results[1],1) or zonename == "all"):
         tmp.extend([i])
   TecUtil.ZoneSetActive(tmp, setto)
   return

#
# The ADK is unforgiving about some operations.  Thus, we check if a dataset
# is available first, then we return the number of fieldmaps.  Note that we use
# fieldmaps instead of zones because the dataset could be transient.  If it is,
# we will turn off parts across all timesteps.
#
def CountFieldmaps():
  if TecUtil.DataSetIsAvailable():
    return (TecUtil.FieldMapGetCount())
  else:
    debugm("There is no dataset loaded.")
    return -1
  return

As mentioned last time, we expose only those functions prefaced by TP_, thus here are our two wrapper functions:

def TP_zones_off(zone_name_pattern):
   return toggle_zones(zone_name_pattern,"off")

def TP_zones_on(zone_name_pattern):
   return toggle_zones(zone_name_pattern,"on")