33.14.11 Quadric Surface Dialog Box

The Quadric Surface dialog box allows you to interactively define quadric functions and create surfaces from them. Lines and circles are commonly used types of quadric functions, so additional support is provided for defining them. See Section  28.7 for details about using the items below.

Note that your inputs for the quadric function must be in SI units.

Controls

Type   selects the type of quadric function. Presently, you may select Line/Plane, Circle/Sphere or a general Quadric. Some of the control buttons take on different meanings for each of the three quadric function types.

Line/Plane   specifies that the surface will consist of all points on the domain that satisfy the equation $ix*x + iy*y + iz*z = distance$, where

ix   is the coefficient of $x$ in the quadric function.

iy   is the coefficient of $y$ in the quadric function.

iz   is the coefficient of $z$ in the quadric function.

distance   is the distance of the line/plane from the origin.

When you press the Update button in Quadric Function, the coefficients in the quadric function will change to reflect your inputs.

Circle/Sphere   specifies that the surface will consist of all points in the domain that satisfy the equation $(x-x0)^2 + (y-y0)^2 + (z-z0)^2= r^2$, where

x0,y0,z0   are the $x,y,z$ coordinates of the center.

r   is the radius.

When you press the Update button in Quadric Function, the coefficients in the quadric function will change to reflect your inputs.

Quadric   specifies that the surface will consist of all points in the domain that satisfy the quadric function $Q= value$, where $Q$ is the quadric function defined by the user as shown below. You will enter value to the right of the Type entry, but the coefficients in the quadric function are entered directly in the Quadric Function box. Note that in 2D problems the z entries are ignored.

x2, y2, z2, xy, yz, zx, x, y, z   are the coefficients of the corresponding terms in the quadric function.

Quadric Function   contains the display of the quadric function and the Update button. If you select Line/Plane or Circle/Sphere as the Type, the coefficients of the quadric function will be updated here when you press the Update button. You will not be able to edit the values in the Quadric Function box directly. If you select Quadric as the Type, you will enter the coefficients directly in this box, and the Update button will be inactive.

Update   updates the coefficients in Quadric Function to reflect the current input.

New Surface Name   designates the name of the new surface. The default is the concatenation of the surface type and an integer which is the new surface ID.

Create   creates the surface.

Manage...   opens the Surfaces dialog box in which you can rename and delete surfaces and determine their sizes.