As
promised last time, this post talks about contouring of zone quantities
such as stress and strain. As you probably know, some data is
associated with gridpoints (e.g. displacements and velocities) and some
data is associated with zones (e.g. stresses and strains). Methods for
contouring data at discrete points are well known; therefore the
contouring of gridpoint data is included in 3DEC. These contours can be accessed through Blocks – Contours in the plot item list.
Contouring zone data is not so easy. To do the contouring, we need
data at discrete points, but how do we do this? Use the centroid of the
zones? Use gridpoints and take the average value of all connecting
zones? There is clearly some sort of interpretation required. At Itasca
we have always been careful not to impose interpretations on the model
data. This is why contours for zone data are not included in 3DEC. Instead you can plot each zone as a solid color through Blocks – Color Scale.
However, after many user requests we have decided to include zone
contouring in future versions, and allow the user to choose the method
of smoothing. Since the new version of 3DEC won’t be out for a while, I have included here a FISH
function to plot stresses as contours by putting zone stress data in
the vertex extra variables. This function finds all zones connected to
each gridpoint and calculates the average stress weighted by zone
volume. The vertex extra variables can then be plotted as contours. An
example plot is shown below. You can use this function to plot any zone
data as contours – just replace the stresses with whatever it is you
wish to plot. Enjoy!
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