query element dimensionality?

[jaredmagnusson]

Hello, I've been using Exodus' python API, and I was curious if there's a way to get the dimensionality for an arbitrary element block?

I think it'd be helpful when loading an arbitrary mesh and iterating over blocks to be able to discern quickly which element types are 3D volumes, which are 2D (faces), etc.

Something like

block_id: int = ...  # some block you've iterated upon
dim: int = mesh.elem_dim(block_id)  # returns 2 for 2D, 3 for 3D, etc

Right now a workaround I've found is

elem_type:str = mesh.elem_type(block_id).decode()
elements_3d = ["HEX8", "TETRA4" ...]  # various 3D elements
elements_2d = ["QUAD4", ...]  #  2D elements
if elem_type in elements_3d:
    dim = 3
elif ...

Is there a less verbose manner of achieving this result already using the API?

[gsjaardema]

Typically, the element dimensionality matches the dimensionality of the exodus model. I think there could be some corner cases where you have a 2D element in a 3D model, but I haven't seen many (any?) usecases of that type; but there are definitely uses for exodus that I am not aware of, so what you are proposing would be something that could be added to the exodus python interface fairly easitly.

I no longer maintain exodus, but if you put up a PR, it would probably be accepted.

[jaredmagnusson]

When I tag boundary conditions, those usually show up as blocks of 2D elements, but maybe that's a quirk of the software I've run