Documentation
How our design tools work, what the files they give you contain, and how to find your way around this site.
What is documented here
Three things: the design tools you can use in your browser, the files they give you, and how this site is laid out. That is all. Wherever a page here says a tool will not do something, the tool says the same thing in the same words, so you can check.
What is not documented here
How our design software works inside is not documented here. The software is open source: its code and its own instructions are public at github.com/utah-MFDA/openmfda_flow. We do not describe it, summarise it or give examples of it on these pages.
The browser design tools described here are a separate thing. They run on your own machine, need no input file, and draw the shape directly. Nothing here replaces the design software’s own documentation, and nothing here depends on it.
Sections
| page | what is in it |
|---|---|
| Generators | The three design tools: what each one makes, what you type in, what it works out for you, and the list of things each one does not check. |
| File formats | What is in each of the three files a tool gives you, and what program opens each one. |
| Site map | Every area of the site, what it is for, and its current state. |
Documentation that lives elsewhere
Two bodies of documentation predate this section and are not duplicated into it.
| where | what it is |
|---|---|
| Hardware and process | The printers, the liquid plastic they print with, and what happens after printing. Every number says where it came from. A lot of it records what we do not know, which is the point of the page. |
| Process record | What we actually tried, what actually happened, and what we concluded. It keeps what we saw separate from what we think explains it. |