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Tutorial on Using and Writing a Loader for Own Geometry File Formats

This applet demonstrates how to parse a geometry file in a user defined file format. As an example, this tutorial uses a very simple file format called abc which is defined solely for this tutorial. Note, JavaView does not support this file format except in this tutorial.

The abc format has a comment header, followed by a list of vertices in R3 and an optional list of faces. The loader generates a point set or an element set depending on whether faces are supplied.

A sample geometry file is cube.abc. To write an own parser simply modify this loader. It is a good idea to name the loader by the extension of your file format.

The applet parameter filename may be a relative name or the URL of an abc geometry file.

View source code:
PaLoader.java of applet,
PgAbcLoader.java of loader,
cube.abc,
cubePoints.abc

Here is an example of a cube in the sample file format abc. Note the faces are optional in this dataset.

8
0.0 0.0 0.0
0.0 1.0 0.0
1.0 1.0 0.0
1.0 0.0 0.0
0.0 0.0 1.0
0.0 1.0 1.0
1.0 1.0 1.0
1.0 0.0 1.0
6
0 1 2 3
4 7 6 5
0 4 5 1
1 5 6 2
2 6 7 3
3 7 4 0