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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Hi all,</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>I am working with a group of CFD researchers that are using ParaView to view their data.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Last year we investigated how ParaView would handle polyhedral meshes.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I took their data and created a VTK file that consisted of an unstructured grid with convex point sets for cells.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This worked, but when the cell counts and complexities got higher the performance dropped considerably.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>I started looking at this problem again, and was wondering if a new VTK cell type would help this problem.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>My reasoning is that when I am creating the convex point set cells, I am throwing a lot of useful information away.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>When I receive the information from the CFD simulation I know the following:</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>1.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The number of points in each face of the cell.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>2. What points make up each face of the cell.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>3.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The points that make up the face are in a specific order.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>4.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>All of the points are on the surface, no internal points.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>5.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The cell number on each side of the face.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>6.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The number of faces per cell.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">I was thinking a cell that consisted of a set of faces might be more efficient in our application.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Each face would consist of a list of point in a specified order where the normal vector would point away from the cell.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></FONT></FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>I am willing to do the work on this, but does this make sense?</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Please give me your thoughts.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Thanks,</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Brian Dotson</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>National Energy Technology Laboratory</FONT></P>
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