[comp.sources.wanted] contouring program needed

b.oconn@cooper.cooper.EDU (Bob O'Connor ) (01/23/88)

Hi.

	I'm looking for a contouring program.  I'm running a water quality
program that gives me concentrations of a pollutant at nodes on a
grid (finite element).  It gives me the location (x,y coordinates) and 
the concentration at that location.  I need to graphically display
the results.  The program will have to interpolate between the grid 
points and find points of equal concentration.  It will also probably
have to have some kind of curve fitting feature.
	If anyone out there has any programs or algorithms which can help
me I would appreciate it.

Thanks in advance.


=============================================================================
                                                                           
   Bob O'Connor                        ihnp4!philabs!phri!cooper!b.oconn        
   The Cooper Union 			       ||                         
                                     cmcl2!cooper!b.oconn                
                                                                    

kurtk@tekcae.TEK.COM (Kurt Krueger) (01/28/88)

ACM Alogorithm 531 worked fine for me.  I was able to speed it up
considerably by changing the bit fiddling subroutines to instrinsic
functions on a VMS system.

The only drawback is that it is NOT structured code and conversions
to c (or even f77 with if-then-else) would be difficult.  I use it in
a stand alone, post processor mode.

kent@xanth.cs.odu.edu (Kent Paul Dolan) (01/28/88)

In article <945@luth.luth.se> sow@cad.luth.se (Sven-Ove Westberg) writes:
>In article <1185@cooper.cooper.EDU> b.oconn@cooper.cooper.EDU (Bob O'Connor ) writes:
>|
>|Hi.
>|
>|	I'm looking for a contouring program.  I'm running a water quality
>|program that gives me concentrations of a pollutant at nodes on a
>|grid (finite element).  It gives me the location (x,y coordinates) and 
>|the concentration at that location.  I need to graphically display
>|the results.  The program will have to interpolate between the grid 
>|points and find points of equal concentration.  It will also probably
>|have to have some kind of curve fitting feature.
>|	If anyone out there has any programs or algorithms which can help
>|me I would appreciate it.
>|
>|Thanks in advance.
>
>If your data is similar to those from a finite element program. Use
>a postprocessor for a FE program. A good and cheap one is MOVIE.BYU
>from Brigham Young University. 
>
>Sven-Ove Westberg, CAD, University of Lulea, S-951 87 Lulea, Sweden.
>UUCP:    {uunet,mcvax}!enea!cad.luth.se!sow
>Internet: sow@cad.luth.se


Another approach that might prove fruitful:

	"Automated Contour Mapping Using Triangular Element Data
	Structures and An Interpolant Over Each Irregular Triangular
	Domain", Chris Gold, University of Alberta, et al., COMPUTER
	GRAPHICS (A Quarterly Repoirt of SIGGRAPH-ACM), Volume 11,
	Number 2, Summer 1977, (SIGGRAPH '77 PROCEEDINGS), page
	170-175.

Chris Gold's (fairly old) algorithm has a nice feature; it does not
require resampling the data onto a regular grid before the contours
are formed, thus preventing lots of well known and otherwise hard to
avoid artifacts.

A program could be written from the description, but it is probably
better to try to contact the author at:  C. L. Gold, Dept. of Geology,
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E1, in case he
hasn't long ago moved on.

Hope this helps; the movie.byu idea is also a good one; no guarantee
it is still as cheap, but that package of programs used to go for the
copy cost, around $100, and it is a very, very nice graphics package
for scientific data display, at the least.

There is also a very nice 3D package available from NCAR (National
Center for Atmospheric Research) Boulder, Colorado, including
countouring, but I've lost further contact information there.

Kent, the man from xanth.