openmc-dev
Feature request. Make void / vacuum material to use with DAGMC
Description
When working with a DAGMC file it has predefined material tags It would be useful I we can make a VOID material in OpenMC with no density and no nuclides so that we can "switch off" materials.
Alternatives
Exploit the vacuum bug in DAGMC by setting the material name to include the word 'vacuum' https://github.com/svalinn/DAGMC/issues/805 which is being fixed soon
Compatibility
This would allow empty materials to be made without error, this is currently not possible
Good call @shimwell!
This would potentially be useful on all geometry types yeah? I think an attribute on the openmc.Settings class (possibly names void_geometry) might be the way to go.
when trying this I found it natural to make an empty openmc material and name it after the dagmc material tag
I think that would will be possible in an even more general way after #3056 is merged using the material assignment overrides included there.
I just discovered working on #3264 (while it might be obvious for more experienced OpenMC Master) that the newly merged DAGMC override material feature (see #3056) occurs after vacuum and graveyard detection. So can't affect vacuum boundary.
nevertheless maybe we could leverage the capability introduced in DAGMC by svalinn/DAGMC#971 which introduce the API to change the values of default string such as vacuum and graveyard.
