Voro++

cell_statistics.cc – Statistics for a single Voronoi cell

The voronoicell class of Voro++ contains a large number of routines for computing basic statistics about a computed Voronoi cell's structure. This example code creates a very simple Voronoi cell, and uses it to demonstrate the routines that are available. There are many routines with names such as face_perimeters and vertices that will return information about the cell directly to the calling program, sometimes making use of STL vectors to pass back a variable amount of data. In addition, many of these routines have a variant that is prefixed with “output_”, which prints the results to screen or to a file – these routines are demonstrated in this example. Here, statistics are only computed for a single cell, but the same routines can be used to analyze complete Voronoi packings using the print_all_custom routine, which is demonstrated in the custom_output.cc example.

A simple Voronoi cell is created in lines 19–22 by initializing a cube and then removing an edge with a single plane cut to make a pentagonal prism. This cell is saved in gnuplot format and is shown above. The code then starts to calculate statistics of the cell, and these can roughly be divided into those that are based on vertices, edges, faces, and the cell volume. The vertex-related statistics are shown first:

For this cell, all of the vertices have the usual order of 3, and there are no higher-order cases. The vertex positions and orders are always displayed in the same order, allowing for scripting languages to match the entries in the two lists. The last entry shows the maximum distance squared of a vertex from the cell center, which in this case is 3=1²+1²+1². The edge-based statistics are as follows:

Since each edge is counted twice when computing the face perimeters, the sum of these adds up to twice the total edge distance. The face-related statistics are:

The face frequency table shows the total number of faces that have different numbers of edges; in this case there are two pentagonal faces and five quadrilateral faces. The following lines list a complete breakdown of information about each face. Each of these routines outputs the faces in the same order, to make it easy for scripting languages to match the entries in each list. The volume-related statistics are:

For this Voronoi cell, the centroid vector can be calculated analytically to be (-2/21,-2/21,0) which matches this result.

Code listing

 1: // Simple cell statistics demonstration code
 2: //
 3: // Author   : Chris H. Rycroft (LBL / UC Berkeley)
 4: // Email    : [email protected]
 5: // Date     : August 30th 2011
 6: 
 7: #include "voro++.hh"
 8: using namespace voro;
 9: 
10: // This function returns a random floating point number between 0 and 1
11: double rnd() {return double(rand())/RAND_MAX;}
12: 
13: int main() {
14:         double x,y,z;
15:         voronoicell v;
16: 
17:         // Initialize the Voronoi cell to be a cube of side length 2, centered
18:         // on the origin
19:         v.init(-1,1,-1,1,-1,1);
20: 
21:         // Remove one edge of the cell with a single plane cut
22:         v.plane(1,1,0,2);
23: 
24:         // Output the Voronoi cell to a file in gnuplot format
25:         v.draw_gnuplot(0,0,0,"simple_cell.gnu");
26: 
27:         // Output vertex-based statistics
28:         printf("Total vertices      : %d\n",v.p);
29:         printf("Vertex positions    : ");v.output_vertices();puts("");
30:         printf("Vertex orders       : ");v.output_vertex_orders();puts("");
31:         printf("Max rad. sq. vertex : %g\n\n",0.25*v.max_radius_squared());
32: 
33:         // Output edge-based statistics
34:         printf("Total edges         : %d\n",v.number_of_edges());
35:         printf("Total edge distance : %g\n",v.total_edge_distance());
36:         printf("Face perimeters     : ");v.output_face_perimeters();puts("\n");
37: 
38:         // Output face-based statistics
39:         printf("Total faces         : %d\n",v.number_of_faces());
40:         printf("Surface area        : %g\n",v.surface_area());
41:         printf("Face freq. table    : ");v.output_face_freq_table();puts("");
42:         printf("Face orders         : ");v.output_face_orders();puts("");
43:         printf("Face areas          : ");v.output_face_areas();puts("");
44:         printf("Face normals        : ");v.output_normals();puts("");
45:         printf("Face vertices       : ");v.output_face_vertices();puts("\n");
46: 
47:         // Output volume-based statistics
48:         v.centroid(x,y,z);
49:         printf("Volume              : %g\n"
50:                "Centroid vector     : (%g,%g,%g)\n",v.volume(),x,y,z);
51: 
52: }