Data visualisation in crystal

Further to ideas involving tactile visualisation using rapid prototyping machines, there are some datasets for which such techniques are not practical, namely for disjoint geometry. The discussion here revolves around laser based machines that can induce tiny bubbles in crystal, the exploration here applies these techniques to science datasets compared to the tourist fare the machines are usually used for.

The machine used here is shown on the right. The standard rectangular blocks are in the order of 10cm cubed maximum. The bubbles are formed by focused laser beams. Interestingly the process is capable of about 1000 points per second. In the case here the data is supplied as a point cloud as a DXF file, see later for a sample format.

Only the most basic of DXF file is required. The minimal structure is as follows:

0
SECTION
2
ENTITIES

[point description goes here]

0
ENDSEC
0
EOF

Each point is described as the following example, the actual 3D positions of the point are the numbers following the "10", "20", and "30" lines.

0
POINT
8
LAYER1
10
-29.2
20
-42.5
30
-252.0