plot geometry directly (without discretization)

[stevengj]

Would be nice to be able to plot the geometry directly, without creating the structure object and the discretization first (which can be slow for large simulations).

It's pretty tricky to implement in its full generality for all possible objects, but would be easy to support a subset of objects (e.g. prisms and other objects aligned with the grid).

The get_epsilon_grid function actually implements one possible version of this functionality, and we could simply plot it.

cc @joamatab

[smartalecH]

The main geometric plotting function is found here:

meep/python/visualization.py

Line 307 in d4b1e1a

def plot_eps(sim,ax,output_plane=None,eps_parameters=None,frequency=0):

You can add all the new code there.

All the boundaries, monitors, sources, etc. are already implemented generically.

[stevengj]

For example, we could just add a resolution argument to sim.plot2d — if that is passed, then instead of initializing the structure it calls get_epsilon_grid instead .

[smartalecH]

And the key is that get_epsilon_grid only pulls the 2D slice at the specified resolution (where normally you have to initialize everything at the full resolution).