Finite Volumes

If you use an enumerator in a Finite Volume context, then a cell equals a patch, as each cell hosts exactly one of them. In this case, _numberOfDoFsPerAxisInCell equals the number of volumes per axis, i.e., if your patch is of size \( p \times p \times p \), then _numberOfDoFsPerAxisInCell equals p.

I assume that each patch is supplemented by a halo layer. It is embedded into this halo. The index you hand into the enumerator can have negative entries, and then you access elements of the halo layer. So the intention is that (0,0,0) is always the left bottom "active" volume no matter how big the halo layer is.

In most ExaHyPE 2 codes, I have patches supplemented with halo layers and (output) data without a halo. I can use different enumerator objects of the same type for both of them: In one case, I set the alo layer properly, and in the latter case I just set it to zero.

Discontinuous Galerkin

If you use this class in a Discontinuous Galerkin context, then _numberOfDoFsPerAxisInCell equals the number of quadrature points per axis. Consequently, this value is equal to the order plus one.

Halos have no real meaning for DG, so you can safely set this value to zero.

Multipatch enumeration

If you work with many cells, enumerators can help you to access the individual cell's data if all the data is stored within one big chunk of memory. Yet, if each cell has its own memory block, while the blocks are scattered over the heap, then you should pass in 1 as number of cells.