SMS:PTM Gage Coverage

A "PTM Gage" coverage has been added to allow the creation of virtual gages. A virtual gage can be associated with either a point or a polygon. When a virtual gage is associated with a point, the user also specifies a radius that defines the area being monitored by the gage (creating a circle).

The gages can be thought of as open traps which monitor the number parcels and material that enter the specified region during the simulation.

When the user invokes the Particle_Module_Compute_Grid_Datasets command, the user can choose to compute datasets associated with a grid, or with a PTM Gage coverage. When the gage coverage option is selected, SMS computes output data associated with each point and/or polygon. This data consists of sets of xy series curves organized by solution and dataset name. Each curve represents a quantity related to the specific gage. These quantities include count, accumulation, concentrations, rate of exposure and all of the options supported by the compute dataset command including the options to bin concentration, exposure and dosage in the "Z" direction (creating 3D data). The output data is visualized using a PTM Gage plot type in the plot wizard for 2D plots.

The polygons and points in the virtual gage coverage are created with discrete color attributes. Each point has a radius attribute that represents the area over which the computations will apply.

PTM Trap Output as Gages

In addition to creating virtual point and polygon gages, the PTM Gage Coverage can also be used to view data output by PTM in its Trap Output file. This functionality does not include the concentration, dosage and exposure options, but it does allow the user to visualize data related to closed traps.