[gdal-dev] SIG Mesh format

[Vincent Mora]

Hi,

I'd like to read/write unstructured mesh informations in a "standard" 
sig format: mesh geometry and computation values at nodes, one result 
set per computation time step.

Is anyone aware of such a format that would support georeferencing and 
whould be a candidate for an ogr driver ?

Thanks,

V.


If this problem rings a bell, read on..

I'm aware of the HDF5 and netcdf, they can be used for unstructured mesh 
but gdal-drivers seem to be for raster data only. hdf5 and netcdf are 
more "metaformat" and libraries for file io than a file format per-se.

AFAIK:
* there is a lot of standard mesh formats, at least for visualization 
there are some that are de-facto standard (.obj, collada...)
* georeferencing in usually not a concern (except openfoam, others ?).

Conceptually, such a format would have:
* a point layer, with a spatial ref sys
* a connectivity table to define the elements (could be associated with 
a geometry, but the geometry needs update when points are moved around)
* computation results table(s) for results at points and results at 
elements (gauss points)

Postgis topology seems to be close to what I need, butpgdump is not the 
easiest data exchange format.

I could use a spatialite database to fit the bill, the good thing with 
this approach is to be able to load/edit the point layer with any 
standard SIG stuff (qgis, ogr2ogr...). The bad thing is that spatialite 
is not the most compact file format known to man. Another bad think is 
that I feel like I'm in this case: http://xkcd.com/927/ ... re-inventing 
the wheel.

I'll be gratefull for your insight.