.. _GeometricFeatures: GeometricFeatures ================= The ``GeometricFeatures`` class knows about both a local cache of :ref:`GeometricData` and the `GitHub repository`_ where it can be retrieved as needed. A ``GeometricFeatures`` object is created with an optional path to the local cache and/or the name of the remote branch or tag in which to find the geometric data. The default local cache is ``./geometric_data``, and the default remote branch is the same as the version number of the ``geometric_features`` package that is installed (highly recommended!). If using a branch other than the package version, the list of all available features and tags (which is included in the package) may not include all the features in the desired branch. That is, if you install v0.1 of the ``geometric_features`` conda package, you should expect to work with v0.1 of the :ref:`GeometricData` as well. An example workflow for creating a ``GeometricFeatures`` object and using it to read in a set of geometric features (possibly after downloading the geometric data from GitHub) is: .. code-block:: python from geometric_features import GeometricFeatures # get geometric data from geometric_features v0.1 and store it in # the local directory ./geometric_data gf = GeometricFeatures(localCache='./geometric_data', remoteBranchOrTag='0.1') # read in a feature collection defining the coastline fc = gf.read(componentName='natural_earth', objectType='region', featureNames=['Land Coverage']) .. _`GitHub repository`: https://github.com/MPAS-Dev/geometric_features