Element abstract class or not?

[TeresiaOlsson]

I'm wondering about the purpose of Element so I only make as small changes as possible when removing the ConfigModels, is it supposed to be an abstract class or not?

At the moment it isn't an abstract class since it doesn't inherit from ABC and none of the methods are abstract but at the same time it seems to me like the users aren't meant to create objects of the class? Many of the methods are not implemented yet and some of them rely on there being a _cfg attribute despite that it doesn't exist in the class, indicating that this is just meant as a class to inherit from.

Also, the ElementConfigModel has two fields (description and lattice_names) that aren't used by the Element class since they are not included in __init__. They are just used because of subclasses inheriting them as part of their ConfigModels.

Should I make this into an abstract class?

[TeresiaOlsson]

I already discovered that I can't make it into an abstract class because not all subclasses implement all the methods.

So I have to keep it as a normal class for now but maybe this should be refactored at some point? I think best practice is that a class should not inherit methods that it doesn't use or need. And it's also confusing for the users that there is a method they can use but it doesn't do anything.