x and y limits to plot

[tylerflex]

Our Simulation supports .plot() and .plot_eps methods, which plot the structures on a single plane. See this notebook for more details.

However, when the simulations get very large, this image can get way too large to render in a reasonable time.

Instead, a use might want to zoom into the plot, by supplying limits.

We would like a feature where the user can supply other keyword arguments to these plotting methods to add limits to the plot.

1. Design an API, how would the user specify the limits given the current plot call?

Then, the plotting should only grab the objects that intersect with the limited extent plane. Hint: there is a Geometry.intersections_box2d method that can be useful for this.

2. Implement the changes to the plotting method where only structures intersecting with the limited extent plane are displayed

3. Test performance on a wide structure (eg a metalens) with and without this plot limits to verify the speedup.4.

Checklist

a PR in this repository (into develop branch) containing

• The new method
• Test coverage in tests/test_components/test_viz.py or tests/test_components/test_simulation.py.
• Add line to CHANGELOG.md explaining what was added.

a PR to the tidy3d-docs repository (develop branch)

• Add a cell showing this method in use in the simulation plotting tutorial notebook

[tylerflex]

Fixed by #1044