Trying to keep track of 3D grid

Hi,

So what I want to do is keep track of a 3D grid of objects I will call "Node"

I have created a Node class and a Grid class of which grid contains an 2D array of Node and I have an array of Grid which _should_ be a 3D cube in memory (or at least thats the way I see it)

I'm getting really confused with how to access each Node member. It should basically be a 3D cube of nodes in memory that I can loop through. How does one define such a class and access them via some kind of matrix 3d cube if you know what I mean.

Thanks

 

Rather than having a complex nest of classes, I'd recommend you build this as a one-dimensional array. (I'm assuming that your Grid class exists solely to store the 2D array of Nodes; if it has other functionality that makes slicing it into grids make sense, ignore this suggestion)

Your Node array's total size will be L*W*H, and you'll arrange your nodes in it by laying them out row by row. When you access a node at (x,y,z), you should be able to get directly to its index like so:

Code (csharp):

1. Node[] nodes = new Node[length * width * height];
2. int index = z * width * height + y * width + x;
3. nodes[index] = CreateNewNode();

I'm assuming that the length, width, and height are all not especially huge (e.g. around 100 nodes on a side or less); if they're much bigger than that, you should use a Dictionary to create a sparse array instead. A fully fleshed out cube that's largely full of empty Nodes would just waste memory. Plus, when you get above around 1500 nodes on a side, you'll start hitting the integer limit on some cells, making it not just a memory hog but will actively cause errors.

 

OK I see what you did there.

So you would use a Dictionary if you had say 8.5 million nodes?

There wont be much data in the Node class itself thanks