Feature request: bus / vector wires — render one edge for a contiguous port slice
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- Dominant language
- TypeScript
- Stars
- 91
- Forks
- 14
- Avg merge
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- Merged PRs (30d)
- 7
Description
Description
Allow a set of edges connecting a contiguous port slice between two blocks to be rendered and
manipulated as a single bus edge:
- Collapsed by default when a drag connects a slice, or when N parallel edges between the same
block pair are detected — drawn as one thicker line, labelled with the slice (e.g.species[0:10]
or a user-supplied name likeexhaust). - Expandable on demand — click to fan out into the individual edges for inspection or to rewire
one channel, then re-collapse. - Purely a view concern. The underlying
.pvmgraph, theConnectionobjects, and the exported
Python would be unchanged — a bus is a grouping annotation over existing edges, not a new
connection type. That keepspathview convertoutput identical and means no PathSim-side change
is needed.
Two smaller things that would compose well with it, though they're separable:
- Drag from a port group (shift-drag, or drag from a block edge rather than a handle) to create the
whole slice in one gesture, instead of ten drags. - A bus label on the edge — this overlaps with #8 (Add labels/annotations to Edges), so the two may
want to share an implementation.
Problem
PathSim handles multi-variable signals well via port slices — Connection(a[0:10], b[0:10]) is
concise in Python and works exactly as you'd want. In PathView the same connection is 10 separate
edges, because each port is an individual handle.
For anything with a chemical or multi-species signal this scales badly. We're building a fusion
fuel-cycle and balance-of-plant block library on PathSim, where every stream carries a molar-flow vector over a species basis, typically 10 species (H2, HD, HT, D2, DT, T2, He3, He4, N2, NT3), and users can extend the basis at runtime.
A ~25-block fuel cycle therefore draws roughly 250 edges for what a person reading the diagram
thinks of as ~25 pipes.
The Python model is fine. It's the diagram that stops being readable, which is a shame because the
diagram is the reason to use PathView at all.
This isn't fusion-specific — it applies to any chemistry, thermofluid, or power-system model where a
"signal" is naturally a vector.
Alternatives Considered
No response
Additional Context
No response
Contributor guide
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First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by tracing the existing edge rendering, port-handle drag behavior, and multi-edge handling in the PathView frontend. Define how contiguous slices, labels, collapse/expand interaction, and group dragging should fit the current view model without changing the .pvm graph, Connection objects, or exported Python. Done means bus edges remain view-only, can be expanded and re-collapsed, and preserve existing graph output.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- typescript
- Domain
- frontend
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Active
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100