Field concept

A field in MEDCoupling point of view, is a structure that allows to store a discretization of a physical value on a defined discretized spatial and possibly temporal support.

The spatial support is a mesh. A field is lying on an entity that will be specified by the spatial discretization of the field. For exemple a field on node will lie on all nodes of its mesh.

A field on cell will lie on all cells of its mesh.

Fields in MEDCoupling follow the two following rules :

A field will lie on ALL entities of its spatial support (mesh).
A field has only one spatial support (mesh) on its temporal support.

The main properties of a field are :

name
spatial support which is a mesh
a spatial discretization
a description of intrinsic nature of the values of field. This is important for conservative interpolation.
a temporal discretization that specifies, if it exists, the time interval on which the field is covering, and how.
number of components

This definition of field in MEDCoupling allows an instance of field to know at any point inside its spatial-temporal support the value.

The class that incarnates the concept described above is : ParaMEDMEM::MEDCouplingFieldDouble.

Some of most important implemented methods are :

getNumberOfComponents
getValueOn
applyFunc
cross instances operations

Spatial discretization concept

This is the concept that makes the link, independantly from temporal discretization, between the field and its spatial support(mesh). This concept allows the field to make a check and interpretation of an array of values given a spatial support (mesh).

The abstract class that incarnates the concept is : ParaMEDMEM::MEDCouplingFieldDiscretization.

The most important pure virtual methods are :

getnumberOfTuples
getValueOn
getWeightingField

Temporal discretization concept

This information allows, independantly from spatial discretization, to associate a time interval, if it exists, on which the field will be defined. This concept is able to give the value at any time of the definition interval (if any).

The abstract class ParaMEDMEM::MEDCouplingTimeDiscretization incarnates this described concept.

This classes and its subclasses are responsible in storing the arrays of the aggregating field.

The most important methods are :