One of the most important features of the N-Body Visualization Framework is its object-oriented design. This makes it much easier to understand how the framework works and also to modify and extend its features. Given here are some of the ideas behind the system design. These ideas themselves may be useful even if you find that the framework as a whole does not meet your needs.

NVisF currently has four different packages, each providing a different function, as follows:

The dataIO package defines an abstract interface to sources of physical data, and several classes that implement this interface for various data formats that have been used.
The plotter package is involved with constructing visualizable Java3D objects given some physical data. It defines abstract strategies for these operations, some concrete implementations, and resources for storing and accessing these plotting strategies.
The animator package constructs movies from a series of 3D scenes. It provides tools for managing the construction of the individual frames and algorithms for performing the animation. This package is currently in a rough form and much additional work is expected.
The viewer package provides an environment for viewing the 3D scenes and animations that come from the plotter and animator packages. It provides tools for manipulating the view, such as rotations and zooming. A number of additional features are planned for future versions of this package.


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This page last updated Jan 2 2001.