Tags

Tags#

Motivation#

DAVE nodes are generic building blocks. This is nice because it allows you to build anything you want.

But then you need a report, or an analysis.

Reports are intended to be read by humans. So it makes sense to view the model from a certain perspective, for example a mooring analysis perspective or a lift-analysis perspective. The perspective from which you look at the model determines what is important and what is not.

Problem is: DAVE has no idea what kind of thing you modelled. And it may even be a mix of things. Maybe you have modelled a vessel that is performing a lift while moored. The cable nodes that are used for mooring lines should be reported in the “mooring” sections of the report while the cable nodes that are used to model slings should instead be reported in the “rigging section”. And when doing a mooring analysis you do not want to optimize the lengths of the rigging.

The reporting section of DAVE needs to know what is what, and the only way for DAVE to know it is if we tell it. So we need to tell the reporting section which nodes should be included in the mooring report and which nodes should be included in the rigging section.

Enter TAGS

Tags offer a way to “tag” nodes.

Tags are labels that can be assigned to nodes. Every node can have an unlimited number of tags. Tag can be used to define groups of nodes with a similar purpose.

In the example of a moored crane vessel the mooring lines (cables) would be given the tag mooring while the cables used for rigging would be tagged rigging.

Defining tags#

Tags can be defined in the tags dock of the GUI

tags_screenshot

Using tags#

A place where they are used is the report node properties report section. Here the nodes to be reported can be limited to a subset by providing a required tag:

image-20231115101543175

Tags and tag-expressions#

When selecting nodes based on their tag a more flexible syntax is allowed to enable selection based on multiple tags or partial tags.

The syntax is similar to filename matching patterns: ? replaces any character, * replaces any number of characters including none.

This means that

  • mo* will match mooring are well as more cargo

  • tag? will match tag1 and tag2 but not tag10

  • *p* match any tag containing a p, including p itself

Furthermore multiple matching patterns may be defined by separating them by a ,

Examples:

  • tag2, tag1 will match both tag1 and tag2

  • t*, mooring will match any tag that starts with a t as well as any tag that equals mooring

Standard tags#

Some nodes, scripts or GUI actions will automatically create one or more tags for some of the created nodes. Also imported assets or components may have pre-defined tags on their nodes.

All tags can be edited/modified or deleted by the user. Beware however that tags that are automatically created will re-appear when the action that creates them is executed again. For example if one of the nodes in a component has a pre-defined tag, then this tag will be assigned whenever the component is loaded. If the tag is manually removed then the tag will re-appear when the component is loaded again.

Scripting#

Tags are strings. Tags are stored in a node. They can be controlled using the following methods:

  • add_tag

  • add_tags

  • delete_tag

All tags of a node can be obtained using the read-only property tags.

When matching or selecting using tags, the ? and * can be used as wildcards to match one or any number of characters. To check if a node has a tag use has_tag. On scene level use s.nodes_tagged or s.nodes_tag_and_type to obtain multiple nodes at once.

TAG are not managed, they are fully controlled by the Scene.

Contents