Chunks¶
The domain to contour can be divided up into a number of chunks that are processed separately.
Advantages of using chunks:
They produce shorter lines/polygons that may be simpler or faster to render.
They make subsequent spatial queries easier.
They allow the use of multithreaded contouring (see Threads).
Disadvantages:
There is a slight performance cost of using chunks.
Some rendering algorithms show faint lines between neighbouring chunks.
Note
Think of chunks as dividing the quads rather than the points of a domain. A z array of shape
(ny, nx) has (ny, nx) points but only (ny-1, nx-1) quads. This can be considered a
single chunk of shape (ny-1, nx-1). Neighbouring chunks have neighbouring quads but they
share the points that lie on their common boundary.
There are three possible ways of specifying chunks in contour_generator() which
are the keyword arguments chunk_size, chunk_count and total_chunk_count. A maximum of
one of the three may be specified.
Warning
You may not always receive the chunk sizes or counts that you request. A chunk has a minimum size of 1x1 quad!
chunk_size¶
chunk_size may be a tuple of (y_chunk_size, x_chunk_size) or a single integer that is used
for both x and y chunk sizes.
>>> z = np.ones((5, 10)) # Sample z data.
>>> cont_gen = contour_generator(z=z, chunk_size=(2, 4))
>>> cont_gen.chunk_size
(2, 4)
>>> cont_gen.chunk_count
(2, 3)
The final chunk in each direction may be smaller than the others. Here in the x-direction there are 3 chunks of size 4; the first two x-chunks cover 8 quads leaving the final x-chunk to cover just a single quad.
chunk_count¶
chunk_count may be a tuple of (y_chunk_count, x_chunk_count) or a single integer that is
used for both x and y chunk counts.
Using chunk_count can give more even chunks than using chunk_size.
total_chunk_count¶
total_chunk_count attempts to give a sensible combination of x and y chunk counts.
It uses a simple algorithm that finds two integer factors that are close as possible to
sqrt(total_chunk_count). Do not use a prime number for total_chunk_count as the two factors
it will use are total_chunk_count and 1.