Data structure

The USTB's UFF class family is composed of the uff superclass and 7 children classes. In turn each of the children classes can have their own children. The idea is that general, unconstrained objects are defined by children classes, while specific, constrained objects are defined by grandchildren.

For instance the uff.probe class has the children: uff.linear_array, uff.curvilinear_array, and uff.matrix_array, all grandchildren of the uff class. With uff.probe we define an arbitrary probe by selecting the position of the elements in a 3D space; while with uff.linear_array we define a linear array by specifing the pitch and number of elements.

USTB processing is simplified by making all processes take most general class as input, rather than grandchildren classes. Each grandchildren class knows how to define itself as a parent class.