User:Saheb

I am an undergraduate student from Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology(DA-IICT), Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India. I have been working with ASCEND since Jan 2012. Initially I was involved in Student_Projects#GUI_improvements, but now I am totally involved in canvas-based modeller for ASCEND.

Code branch: saheb:

Code branch: saheb-canvas:

GSOC Project

Enhancement of Canvas Based Modeller by implementing feature of custom icons for blocks which will help in better creation of flow charts of the models.

GSOC Project Description

Original Description of the project is present here(Student_Projects#Canvas-based_modeller_for_ASCEND_.28more_work_is_possible.29)

Writing very long models has always been cumbersome, so this is something which takes care of the lazy people. Creating models can be very easy after the implementation of canvas-based modeller. You just have to do some steps in order to create a model of your choice.

a) Clicking icons on the icon editor

b) Creating connections between the icons

c) Enforcing few constraints if any on the blocks

d) Explicitly mentioning values of varibles of the blocks.

After completing this steps, your text-based model will be automatically created and can be solved even with the same ASCEND Solvers.

My project deals with creating customizable icons for the canvas using Gaphas module of Python. Right now canvas creates only rectangles blocks, which are unconstrainted at the moment but I will enforce constriants on them soon. By custom blocks we mean, more intutive user-friendly icons which resmeble the original shape of the model. e.g. We want to put pumps in our station, so in order to create a good-resembling flow chart of working of the station we need pump and not rectangles. If I complete my project successfully we will have custom blocks desired by the user.

GSOC Milestones

a) Implementing constraints on present blocks.

Rectangle should remain a rectangle and should not turn into a square, this will help me in understanding how the constraint solver works in Gaphas.

b) Hard-coding few custom blocks.

Means specifying the geometry and constraints on the blocks directly into the python code. This is for confirming that Gaphas works the way we want with custom blocks or not.

c) Storage of custom icons and costraints

Genrealizing the custom blocks for all user-defined icons and find a way to store this geometry and constraints. It is still an open question of how will we store this specifications externally. Maybe we have to create an icon-editor.

GSOC Weekly Report

Community Bonding Period (Before 21st May) >> Discussed the goals of the project with mentor and community in more details, even had a good conversation with Grivan(past developer working on this project) and griped myself with the tools used by ASCEND.

Week#01 (21st May to 27th May) >> Getting grip on Gaphas and enforcing constraints on present Blocks.

Bug Solving

(1) I recently submitted patch for bug 529. Patch is present in the bug reporter, you can check it from the previous link.

Bug 529 - Deleting multiple rows simultaneously from observer tab was a problem, i.e currently when we used to right click after selecting, it used to deselect the selection. Solution was selection should remain static on right clicking and hence user should be able to delete multiple rows simultaneously.It will be quite useful to delete multiple rows after a Study if some rows have failed to solve.

(2) I am currently working on bug 429.

Bug 429 - If there are no preferred units, what is currently used is base SI dimensions and my task is to display smart intuitive units in place of SI dimensions( i.e. N in place of kg*m/s^2). I will use the units present after the Default value in Default statements for instance in force DEFAULT defvalue{N}, and so will have to store the braced text while parsing through it. So the hierarchy after the feature gets implemented will be:

a) User Defined Units.

b) Preferred Units if present in ascend.ini.

c) Smart Intuitive Default Units.

d) Base Dimensions.

Tasks

- Understanding the working of various layers involved.

- Modify the C Layer code and modify the typedesc struct to get default unit included in it.

- Write a CUnit Code to test the initial modification of C layer code.

- Understand the C++ wrapping and SWIG tool.

- Write C++ functions to get the default unit and then pass it to the PyGTK layer.

- Modify test.py to test the final feature.

I have completed first three tasks and looking forward to quickly solve the bug