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--></style></head><body bgcolor=white lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>Hello,<br><br>I am a mechanical engineering grad student. This question is regarding an active research project in our lab. We wrote a FEA program in C++ for 3D solid mechanics problems. At each time step, we output a vtu file using the unstructured grid format. Finally, we output a pvd file that creates a collection and associates a time step value with each vtu file. So far, we have been working with a single body, comprised of multiple hexahedral elements. Our point data consists of displacement, velocity, and acceleration. Our cell data consists of centroid stress and centroid strain.<br><br>We now want to start solving multi-body models. Do we have to write a separate vtu file for each body, at each time step? Is there a way to combine multiple bodies into a single vtu file, at each time step, in a way that we can still view them as separate parts in ParaView? I would like be able to use show/hide and color on a part basis. How do people usually handle this sort of thing? For example, if I have 10 parts, will I have 10 separate vtu files at each time step? Note that, within the FEA code, we define a part_id for each element in the model. Is there a way I can associate each element with a part_id in the vtu file? That way ParaView could tell the difference between each part?<br><br>Thank you for your help!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>Best regards,<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>Jesse</span><o:p></o:p></p></div></body></html>