gview(1)

NAME
gview - graph viewer for Inventor 3d databases

SYNOPSIS
gview [file | < file]

DESCRIPTION
gview is a program for viewing, editing, and learning about Inventor 3d scene graphs. There are two views of the Inventor scene graph: a 3d rendered view (left) and a scene graph view (right). The 3d rendered view displays the data in an examiner viewer and allows selection as well as viewing. The scene graph view renders the scene database as a directed acyclic graph illustrating the structure and relationships within the database. This view is displayed in a GraphViewer component, which is derived from the Inventor plane viewer. Each node in the graph is represented by a 3D icon.

If you select an object in one view, it will be highlighted in both views. This is a very interesting way to learn about Inventor scene databases. You can create new objects, edit the values of objects, and rearrange the structure of the database by cutting and pasting. (See the descriptions of the menu items for details.)

This program is especially useful for Inventor programmers who want to analyze a specific database or who wish to experiment with Inventor features and visualize the database at the same time.

GVIEW MENU
The top bar contains the following three items under the gview menu:

Save in gview.iv
    Saves the Inventor scene (as displayed in the examiner viewer) in the file gview.iv.

Save display graph in disp.iv
    Saves the scene representing the graph (as displayed in the graph viewer) in the file disp.iv.

Quit
    The usual.

GRAPH VIEWER MENU
The top bar in the right-hand graph viewer window contains the following menus:

Graph
    This menu contains an Update button that updates the graph view based on changes made to the scene graph. (This is useful only if the GraphViewer component is used in some application that can modify the structure of the original scene graph; the GraphViewer does not update based on changes to this scene graph, since that would be too expensive.)

Edit
    This menu enables cutting, copying, pasting, and duplicating the selected node in the scene graph. When pasting (or duplicating, which is copying and pasting in one operation), you have a choice of pasting a copy of the node or a reference to (instance of) it. Feedback appears to indicate where the copy or instance will be located.

Select
    This menu allows you to change easily which node is selected.

Group
    This menu allows you to hide or show nodes under a group node. If a group node is selected, the Open button displays the immediate children of the group, while Open All displays all descendants. Close hides all descendants, and Toggle toggles between the open and closed states.

Inst
    When a node is the child of more than one parent, each instance after the first is displayed as an instance icon (a letter "I" in the default icons). When an instance icon is selected, the Toggle button in this menu toggles the display of a line that connects the instance icon to the node it is an instance of. The Swap button exchanges the instance icon with this other node. (This can be useful to examine nodes under an instance of a group node.)

Node
    The Create button in this menu brings up a NodeCreator widget that allows you to create a new instance of any built-in Inventor node class. Once a type is selected or typed in, feedback appears in the GraphViewer to help you place the new node in the graph. The Edit Fields button brings up a FieldEditor widget that allows you to edit the values of fields in a selected node.

SHORTCUTS
Each menu button has a corresponding keyboard shortcut displayed in the pull-down menu. Double-clicking on a node icon initiates a common action for that type of node. For a group, it is equivalent to the Group Toggle button. For an instance, it is equivalent to the Inst Toggle button. For any other node, it is equivalent to the Node Edit Fields button.

ICONS
The 3D icons used to represent nodes in the scene graph are read from a file called gviewIcons.iv. This file is searched for in (in order) directories specified in the IV_GRAPH_DIR environment variable, the current directory, and the usual place this file gets installed (See the FILES section).

Each icon in this file is represented by a subgraph (rooted by a separator) whose first N children are label nodes; each of the label nodes defines one node type to be represented by that subgraph. Icons follow the node hierarchy; that is, the icon representing a group is used for all group nodes that don't have explicitly different icons.

The default icon set is chosen to be similar to the icons used in the Inventor documentation.

SOURCE CODE
Note that the source code to gview comes with the Open Inventor 3d Toolkit.

FILES
/usr/share/data/models/* - Sample 3D data files /usr/share/src/Inventor/demos/gview/* - Source to gview /usr/demos/data/Inventor/gviewIcons.iv - Default icon file

SEE ALSO
SceneViewer, drop, inventor, ivcat, ivview, noodle, showcase, revo, textomatic