ParaView/Users Guide/VTK Data Model

To use ParaView effectively, you need to understand the ParaView data model. Here, we will introduce the the VTK data model used by ParaView briefly. For more details, you can refer to one of the VTK books.

The most fundamental data structure in VTK is a data object. Data objects can either be scientific datasets such rectilinear grids or finite elements meshes (see below) or more abstract data structures such as graphs or trees. Since ParaView is geared toward scientific visualization, we will focus on the former and touch briefly on the latter when necessary.

Datasets are formed of smaller building blocks, mainly meshes and

• Mesh
• Points (geometry)
• A

Uniform Rectilinear Grid (Image Data)

Rectilinear Grid

Curvilinear Grid (Structured Grid)

Polygonal Grid (Polydata)

Unstructured Grid

Table

Multiblock Dataset

AMR Dataset

Multipiece Dataset