Selectors

A selector picks entities by rule instead of by listing them. It names the kind of entity it targets and carries predicates on the entity name; the rule is stored with the simulation and re-applied on the cloud, so it keeps working when a geometry is re-uploaded with the same naming.

SurfaceSelector	Pattern-based selector for Surface entities.
EdgeSelector	Pattern-based selector for Edge entities.
VolumeSelector	Pattern-based selector for volume zone entities.
BodyGroupSelector	Pattern-based selector for body group entities.

wheels = fl.SurfaceSelector(name="wheels").match("*rim*")
body = fl.SurfaceSelector(name="body").match("*body*").not_match("*_mirrored")
fixed = fl.SurfaceSelector(name="fixed").any_of(["fuselage", "tail"])

match and not_match take a pattern; any_of and not_any_of take exact names. Predicates chained on one selector are intersected by default; pass logic="OR" to take their union instead.

Pattern syntax

A pattern must match the whole entity name, case-sensitively. Four constructs have a special meaning; every other character stands for itself.

Pattern	Matches	Example
*	any run of characters, including none	wing* matches wing, wing_1 and wing/flap
?	exactly one character	face_? matches face_1 but not face_12
[seq]	one character out of seq; ranges such as [a-z] are allowed	face_[0-9] matches face_7; [wW]ing* matches wing_1 and Wing_1
[!seq]	one character not in seq	face_[!0-9] matches face_a but not face_1

Consequences worth knowing:

• * also matches the empty string: wing* matches wing itself, and * matches every entity.

• / is an ordinary character. * crosses it, and zone/bc* is written literally.

• {, }, \, (, ), ^ and an unclosed [ are ordinary characters. A backslash does not escape anything, and ^ inside brackets is a member of the set, not a negation – negate with !.

• To match a literal *, ? or [, put it in brackets: literal[*]star, face[?], face[[]1]. A ] outside brackets needs nothing.

The dialect is exactly the Python standard library’s fnmatch.fnmatchcase(), whose documentation is the normative reference (not fnmatch.fnmatch(), which folds case on some platforms). The same rules apply wherever Flow360 accepts a name pattern, in the Python client and in the web interface.

Case-insensitive matching

There is no flag. Either spell the pattern with bracket sets, [wW]ing*, or give one selector a predicate per spelling and take the union:

wing = fl.SurfaceSelector(name="wing", logic="OR").match("wing*").match("Wing*").match("WING*")

Rejected spellings

Some glob engines give a meaning to brace alternation, extended-glob groups and POSIX character classes. Flow360 does not. Rather than let such a pattern silently degrade to literal characters and match nothing, validation rejects it with a message naming the replacement:

Rejected	Write instead
{wing,flap}*	one predicate per alternative under logic="OR": .match("wing*").match("flap*")
!(internal)*	.not_match("internal*")
@(wing|flap)_1	one predicate per alternative, as for braces
+(ab)	no equivalent; repetition is not part of the dialect
[[:digit:]]*, [[:alpha:]]*	[0-9]*, [a-zA-Z]*

*( and ?( are not rejected: they read as a wildcard followed by a literal parenthesis, so Body*(1) matches Body_(1).