10.2.1 Patch Management

The patch is the atomic element used to transfer individual structural representations. (For more information about patches, see 6.3 Patches .)

All classes with "patch" in their name (e.g. NodePatch, PolylineSetPatch, Grid2DPatch, etc.) inherit from the parent abstract class of patches. Each patch must have a patch index, which is used to uniquely sequence the elements of the patches with the same names.

This (implicit) patch index corresponds to the order in which the patches are stored in the XML instance.

RESQML uses this explicit method to avoid any ambiguity in data ordering among the elements. For example, the triangle indexing of a triangulated set representation consists of multiple triangles, each having its patch index, which specifies the relative ordering of the triangle patches.