SoWEMDiagnosis

InventorModule

genre	WEMInformation
author	MeVis Medical Solutions AG
package	MeVisLab/Standard
dll	SoWEM
definition	SoWEM.def
see also	WEMInfo
keywords	error, warning, check

Purpose

The SoWEMDiagnosis runs a full diagnostics on the input WEM and reports these errors both as an Open Inventor scene and as a short and detailed list on its panel.

Usage

Just plug a WEM into the input. Optionally plug in the Inventor output to any 3D Viewer, together with the output of a SoWEMRenderer module.

Details

The main panel consists of four major parts.

1. On the left an overview of all errors, warnings and notices with a short description of the occurred error is displayed.
2. On the top right Display Options are shown, which allow to filter warnings and notices.
3. Below these Display Options, is some detailed information about the selected primitive.
4. At the bottom a status bar shows the total amount of errors, warnings and notices and a global status of the input WEM.

As can be seen each type of error has a different color indicating a different severity level of the error.

Icon	Meaning
	FATAL ERROR Other WEM modules using this mesh will not work (best case scenario) but most likely the module will crash or cause a segmentation fault. Fatal errors include double linked primitives and invalid edges/faces.
	ERROR Although not fatal to other WEM modules, these errors are still severe enough to cause modules to fail. Errors include non-connected primitives, inverted normals and invalid edge pointers.
	WARNING As the name suggests, these indicate certain things about the mesh that would better be fixed if one wants to have a perfect WEM. Warnings include orphan/redundant nodes and zero-sized edges/faces.
	NOTICE These are totally harmless! Notices include boundaries, flat regions and concave faces.

Each listview entry can be selected on which more information about the error and primitive are shown at the right of the panel. Use the display options to limit the amount of warnings and/or notices to be shown. This both applies to the listview as to the Open Inventor scene. Using the settings button at the bottom right one can also enable the merging of error messages to one single listview entry.

This is the full list of fatals, errors, warnings and notices, and their meaning.

Nodes:

Icon	Message	Meaning
	Double Entry	The node has a double listing for an edge/face, removing the edge/face results in an invalid listing.
	Non Connected	The node has an edge or face which has no connection to this node. Either the node has an edge or face too many, or the relationship between both is broken.
	Bad Normal Length	The node normal has a length which differs from 1. Since the node normal is calculated from the incident face normals, this means something is wrong with the surrounding faces. For instance: their area is zero, resulting in normals (0,0,0) and as such resulting in a node normal (0,0,0).
	Dead End	The node only has one edge. This does not describe a valid 2-manifold.
	Orphan	The node has no incident edges nor faces. Since it has no link with the rest of the mesh, it can safely be removed.
	Redundant/Collinear	The node has two incident edges and faces and can be removed. This is certainly the case if this node and the other nodes from the incident edges are also collinear.
	Neighborhood Not Set	The node has no edges and is not an orphan, but the WEM itself claims to have egdes. Edge relationship for this node should be built.
	Boundary	The node is part of an edge which only has one incident face, the other being NULL, indicating a boundary.
	Flat Region	The maximum angle between the node normal and the normals of the incident faces is smaller than one degree.
	Valence 3	The node has an edge valence of three, meaning there are three incident edges belonging to three incident triangles. Each edge is shared by two of these three triangles. This allows to merge these three triangles into one bigger triangle. Nodes with valence 3 result in ugly triangle configuration and should be avoided where possible.

Edges:

Icon	Message	Meaning
	NULL Head	The head of the winged edge is NULL which makes it an invalid edge.
	NULL Tail	The tail of the winged edge is NULL which makes it an invalid edge.
	NULL Pointer	One of this edge’s edge pointers (lPred, lSucc, rPred or rSucc) is NULL. This points to an invalid or partially set edge neighborhood.
	Equal Pointer	One of this edge’s edge pointers (lPred, lSucc, rPred or rSucc) is equal to another of those edge pointers. This is mostly the consequence of an illegal operation which leaves the edge neighborhood broken or not updated.
	Non Connected Pointer	One of this edge’s edge pointers (lPred, lSucc, rPred or rSucc) is not connected to either the head or tail of this edge.
	Edge Pointer Link	One of this edge’s edge pointers (lPred, lSucc, rPred or rSucc) does not link back to this edge.
	Circular Pointer	One of this edge’s edge pointers (lPred, lSucc, rPred or rSucc) points to this edge.
	Order	The order of the edges for the left or right face of this edge are not in the correct order to belong to a left or right face.
	Fold	The edge creates a fold on the mesh. Two incident faces of an edge are folding when their normals make an angle of approximate 180 degrees.
	Zero Length	The edge has zero length. As a consequence the triangles to which this edge belongs have a zero-sized area.
	Neighborhood Not Set	The edge has no edge pointers (lSucc, lPred, rSucc and rPred), but the WEM itself claims to have edges. Edge relationship for this edge should be built.
	Boundary	The edge is part of a boundary, having only one incident face the other being NULL.

Faces:

Icon	Message	Meaning
	NULL Node	The face has a node which is NULL.
	NULL Edge	The face has an edge which is NULL.
	Invalid	The amount of nodes and edges for this face differs. This does not describe a valid face.
	Double Entry	The face has a double listing for a node/edge. Removing the node/edge results in an invalid listing.
	Non Connected	The face has a node/edge which does not link back to this face.
	Edge Offset	The order of nodes and edges for this face is not the same. Suppose i to be the index of the node in the nodes list of this face: node i and node i+1 are not part of edge i. This is required by a lot of WEM modules.
	Normal Inverted	The normal is inverted. This only applies to (concave) faces where the normal was wrongfully calculated.
	Zero Area	The face has a zero area. This also means at least one of the edges has a zero length. The face should be removed since it is not visible.
	Bad Normal Length	The normal of the face has a length which differs from 1. This mostly results from having a zero area resulting in a normal (0,0,0) with length 0.
	Neighborhood Not Set	The face has no edges, but the WEM itself claims to have edges. Edge relationship for this face should be built.
	Concave	The face is concave. Actually this should be avoided since rendering these faces may result in visual artefacts.

Windows

SoWEMDiagnosis

Settings

Input Fields

inputWEM

name: inputWEM, type: WEM(MLBase)

The WEM to be diagnosed.

For accessing this object via scripting see the Scripting Reference: MLWEMWrapper.

Output Fields

self

name: self, type: SoNode

The Open Inventor scene containing the parts of the WEM where anything out of the ordinary was diagnosed.

Parameter Fields

Field Index

Alpha (nodeAlpha): Float	numHoles: Integer	selectedErrorString: String
Alpha (edgeAlpha): Float	numInverted: Integer	selectedType: Integer
Alpha (faceAlpha): Float	numNeighborhood: Integer	shouldUpdate: Trigger
boundingBoxCaching: Enum	numNotice: Integer	Show boundaries: Bool
Elevation: Float	numOrphan: Integer	Show collinear nodes: Bool
errorString: String	numRedundant: Integer	Show concave faces: Bool
hitFaceEntryNum: Integer	numValence3: Integer	Show duplicate nodes: Bool
Max Num Displayed Errors: Integer	numWarning: Integer	Show flat regions: Bool
Max. Displayed Messages: Bool	numZeroSize: Integer	Show holes: Bool
numBoundary: Integer	patchAlpha: Float	Show inverted: Bool
numCollinear: Integer	pickCulling: Enum	Show neighborhood not set: Bool
numConcave: Integer	renderCaching: Enum	Show nodes with valence 3: Bool
numDuplicateNodes: Integer	renderCulling: Enum	Show orphan nodes: Bool
numError: Integer	Scale (scaleNodes): Float	Show redundant nodes: Bool
numFatal: Integer	Scale (scaleEdges): Float	Show zero-size primitives: Bool
numFlatRegion: Integer	selectedEntry: Integer	Status: String

Visible Fields

Alpha (nodeAlpha)

name: nodeAlpha, type: Float, default: 1, minimum: 0, maximum: 1

Sets the alpha value for the rendered nodes.

Alpha (edgeAlpha)

name: edgeAlpha, type: Float, default: 1, minimum: 0, maximum: 1

Sets the alpha value for the rendered edges.

Alpha (faceAlpha)

name: faceAlpha, type: Float, default: 0.40000001, minimum: 0, maximum: 1

Sets the alpha value for the rendered faces.

Scale (scaleNodes)

name: scaleNodes, type: Float, default: 2, minimum: 0.1, maximum: 10

Scales the size of the displayed nodes.

Scale (scaleEdges)

name: scaleEdges, type: Float, default: 1, minimum: 0.1, maximum: 10

Scales the thickness of the displayed edges.

Elevation

name: faceElevation, type: Float, default: 0.1

Adjusts how much the faces are elevated into the normal direction to enhance their visibility.

Show redundant nodes

name: showRedundant, type: Bool, default: TRUE

If checked, redundant nodes are detected and displayed.

Show collinear nodes

name: showCollinear, type: Bool, default: TRUE

If checked, collinear nodes are detected and displayed.

Show orphan nodes

name: showOrphan, type: Bool, default: TRUE

If checked, orphan ndoes are detected and displayed.

Show flat regions

name: showFlatRegion, type: Bool, default: TRUE

If checked, flat regions (adjacent faces have the same normal) are detected and displayed.

Show boundaries

name: showBoundary, type: Bool, default: TRUE

If checked, boundaries are detected and displayed.

Show concave faces

name: showConcave, type: Bool, default: TRUE

If checked, concave faces are detected and displayed.

Show neighborhood not set

name: showNeighborhood, type: Bool, default: TRUE, deprecated name: showNeighbourhood

If checked, non-set neighborhood primitves (missing pointers) are detected and displayed.

Show zero-size primitives

name: showZeroSize, type: Bool, default: TRUE

If checked, zero-size primitives (faces and edges) are detected and displayed.

Show nodes with valence 3

name: showValence3, type: Bool, default: TRUE

If checked, nodes with a valence of 3 (three edges attached) are detected and displayed. Those nodes typically do not contribute to the overall geometry but spoil the rendering because of their contribution ot the normal calculation.

Show duplicate nodes

name: showDuplicateNodes, type: Bool, default: TRUE

If checked, duplicate nodes (share the same position) are detected and displayed.

Show holes

name: showHoles, type: Bool, default: TRUE

If checked, holes are detected and displayed.

Show inverted

name: showInverted, type: Bool, default: TRUE

If checked, inverted faces are detected and displayed.

Max. Displayed Messages

name: useMaxNumDisplayedErrors, type: Bool, default: TRUE

If checked, the Max Num Displayed Errors is used to limit the amout of displayed single errors.

Max Num Displayed Errors

name: maxNumDisplayedErrors, type: Integer, default: 10, minimum: 10

Adjusts the maximum number of displayed single errors. If there are more errors than this number, they are collected into one, but the Inventor output will still feature all erroneous primitives.

Status

name: status, type: String

Displays the status of this module. The icon shows the worst detected state.

Hidden Fields

renderCaching

name: renderCaching, type: Enum, default: AUTO

Values:

Title	Name
On	ON
Off	OFF
Auto	AUTO

boundingBoxCaching

name: boundingBoxCaching, type: Enum, default: AUTO

Values:

Title	Name
On	ON
Off	OFF
Auto	AUTO

renderCulling

name: renderCulling, type: Enum, default: AUTO

Values:

Title	Name
On	ON
Off	OFF
Auto	AUTO

pickCulling

name: pickCulling, type: Enum, default: AUTO

Values:

Title	Name
On	ON
Off	OFF
Auto	AUTO

patchAlpha

name: patchAlpha, type: Float, default: 1

hitFaceEntryNum

name: hitFaceEntryNum, type: Integer, default: -1

errorString

name: errorString, type: String, persistent: no

selectedType

name: selectedType, type: Integer, default: -1

selectedEntry

name: selectedEntry, type: Integer, default: -1

selectedErrorString

name: selectedErrorString, type: String

numRedundant

name: numRedundant, type: Integer, default: 0

numCollinear

name: numCollinear, type: Integer, default: 0

numOrphan

name: numOrphan, type: Integer, default: 0

numFlatRegion

name: numFlatRegion, type: Integer, default: 0

numBoundary

name: numBoundary, type: Integer, default: 0

numConcave

name: numConcave, type: Integer, default: 0

numNeighborhood

name: numNeighborhood, type: Integer, default: 0, deprecated name: numNeighbourhood

numZeroSize

name: numZeroSize, type: Integer, default: 0

numValence3

name: numValence3, type: Integer, default: 0

numDuplicateNodes

name: numDuplicateNodes, type: Integer, default: 0

numHoles

name: numHoles, type: Integer, default: 0

numInverted

name: numInverted, type: Integer, default: 0

numFatal

name: numFatal, type: Integer, default: 0

numError

name: numError, type: Integer, default: 0

numWarning

name: numWarning, type: Integer, default: 0

numNotice

name: numNotice, type: Integer, default: 0

shouldUpdate

name: shouldUpdate, type: Trigger