User Guide

The purpose of this guide is to walk the user through how-to use the package. It is complemented by the examples.

Note

This is a work in progress and not all features are documented yet. Please check back later for updates.

Geometry, ijk indexing, and .pbm files

parq-blockmodel works with regular 3D block models that are stored in Parquet files and wrapped by the parq_blockmodel.blockmodel.ParquetBlockModel class.

The canonical on-disk container for a block model is a file with a .pbm extension. A .pbm file is just a Parquet table that:

• stores block attributes (grades, density, rock type, …),

• may include centroid columns x, y, z for convenience and interoperability, and

• always carries embedded geometry metadata under a reserved key ("parq-blockmodel").

The geometry metadata encodes a regular logical grid in terms of (i, j, k) indices via parq_blockmodel.geometry.RegularGeometry. This ijk grid is the single source of truth for the model layout:

• shape gives the number of blocks along each axis,

• block_size and corner describe the local lattice (with block_size giving spacing along the local i/j/k axes, not necessarily world X/Y/Z), and

• origin plus optional axis vectors (axis_u, axis_v, axis_w) define the orientation of the logical axes in 3D space.

World coordinates (x, y, z) are therefore a derived view of (i, j, k) + geometry rather than the primary index. Existing xyz-centric Parquet files remain supported, and ParquetBlockModel can promote them into canonical .pbm containers with embedded geometry.

For a deeper, developer-oriented discussion of how geometry and metadata are encoded, see Developer notes: geometry & metadata.