8.4.2 VCPGP Integration

The VLSICAP Graphics Processor (VCPGP) was written out of two reasons:

• Since a full framework integration of VLSICAP - which would have included PIF output capability for MESHCP and PIF input capability for VLSICP - was not attempted, the framework visualization facilities could not be used for visualizing the grids and the modified geometry written by MESHCP.

• The standalone version of VLSICAP did not provide a visualization program for this kind of output, although a visual control of those files is absolutely necessary, if numerical problems occur due to ill-conditioned grids.

Since these intermediate geometry and grid files created by the grid generator have a simple format, writing a small tool for visualizing them was definitely less effort than providing the PIF input/output capability on the intermediate level as stated above, too. Therefore VCPGP was created, which consists of less than 800 lines of C code reading those intermediate files and writing Simple Vector Graphics (SVG) output which can directly be fed into the VISTA xsvg visualizer.

VCPGP was integrated on the user interface by providing a separate panel controlling various visualization options like point marks with selectable size, axes, point and polygon numbers and window borders. Fig. 8.3 shows this VCPGP control window.