[Paraview] Writing a Custom Reader

[Andy Cedilnik]

Hi Mike,

Why don't you just create a single poly-data or unstructured grid with a 
cell centered scalar field that has a unique scalar for each "particle". 
Then ParaView will use the lookup table and color each "particle" with 
its own color.

The problem of using a collection of actors is that there is some 
overhead of switching from one actor to another, so you get better 
performance if you use a single actor.

          Andy

Mike Jackson wrote:
> 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
>
>
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-- 
Andy Cedilnik
Kitware Inc.