[Paraview] Writing a Custom Reader

[Mike Jackson]

Hello,
   Now the Paraview is running on my Intel Mac I am really interested  
in doing some development with it in earnest. The first thing I need  
is a reader to read up our custom data format. I have my notes and  
exercises from a Paraview Class that I attended last year but I think  
I am missing a basic concept.
    My data is a triangle mesh. Within the dataset there are distinct  
"structures" that are completely closed triangles meshes. Each of  
these meshes has a specific color that I want it displayed as. The  
colors are stored in the file.
   I have written a "VTK" loader, ie, I have code that reads the data  
but returns a vtkCollection of vtk3dLODActors. I am guess that  
returning vtkActors may be a bit too high level for Paraview. What  
would be an appropriate data structure to return from my loader?

     Also, does Paraview/VTK have a file format that retains color/ 
material/attribute information for a triangle mesh?
   So for example each completely enclosed triangle mesh, call it a  
"particle", needs a unique ID. The particle will also have a specific  
color/material information associated with it.


Thanks for any help or pointers to information.
------
Mike Jackson
Senior Research Engineer/New Visualization Engineer
mike.jackson at imts.us