Documentation for basic geometry commands
 

Following François Grégoire's advice in another thread, I've begun learning Tcl.

While ICEM's programmers guide is mentioned as poor in that thread, I'm struggling to find even basic documentation for the basic geometric functions. Some slightly more advanced ones are possible to find (there are descriptions for several "ic_geo_"-prefixed commands).

But specifically, I'm looking for documentation on:

1. ic_point
2. ic_curve
3. ic_surface

The documentation does not seem to have any mention of them.

The way I have been moving forward so far is by recording clicks in the gui. But that seems to also set some default flags that gives me a feeling that others might exist.

E.g.:

• ic_curve is given a list of points - if more than 2 are supplied it makes a bezier-like curve. There might well exist a flag that made it piecewise linear.
• ic_surface, similarly, can take a list of curves, but there might exist a flag that prevents it from modifying the input curves (I've experienced it concatenating some of them - sometimes).

I've tried e.g.
But that just returns "args" - not very helpful.

Then I tried:
But the procedure body returned seems to be some sort of wrapper that reroutes to
, which I can't figure out how to access.

So: Does any one here know of alternative documentation channels where these basic commands are documented?

/adam

What I'm doing to 'get by': I type ic_curve alone and Icem returns Error: wrong # args: should be "ic_curve method part name def args", then I go in the Icem programmer's guide and I look for method, part, name, def and args... It's annoying but it's the only way I found.

I wonder if we are supposed to not use commands that are not in the programmer's guide. For example, ic_point is not in the guide but there is ic_geo_cre_pnt, is the latter supposed to be better? Same for ic_curve VS ic_geo_cre_line...?

Hi Adam,

In the programmers guide, look for ic_geo_cre_pnt, ic_geo_cre_line, ic_geo_create_surface_from_curves in the programmers guide. These commands also have demo scripts in the samples folder of the ICEM install. The programmers guide will tell you where to find them.

These commands are probably fine for most applications. Of course there are many other options for creating curves and surfaces though, such as elipses, b-splines, swept surfaces, extrudes, revolves, etc etc.


Stu

Hi Francois,

In my experience, both work equally well.

I think the equivalent of ic_curve is ic_geo_cre_bsp_crv_n_pnts, because
ic_geo_cre_line will not create splines like ic_curve.

Stu

Hi Stuart,

You're right ic_geo_cre_bsp_crv_n_pnts is more versatile.

Adam, here's a linear polyline, very convenient: