[Paraview] Question about custom interfaces within Paraview

[Nikil Kapur]

Hi,
I'm writing for some general advice about Paraview for a particular 
application I have in mind. I wish to write a simplified interface that 
early stage university students can use to bring in CFD datasets and 
explore these using paraview. The idea is that instead of giving 
students free reign over the tools within paraview to explore the 
datasets, they will be lead through a number of exercises to help them 
understand the physics of the flow simulations. Since this is targeted 
at 1st year students I don't want them to get caught up in intricacies 
of CFD (that comes later) - rather focus on the physics of the flow. I 
believe there's a real educational driver for this.  I'm looking at a 
variety of options but my questions are these:
1. Is it possible to build simplified interfaces within Paraview ?
2. Is it possible to script in basic functions so that students can dial 
in (say) Reynolds number using a slider bar and get Paraview  to load in 
the right datasets ?
3. How hard is something like this to a mathematically competent 
engineer with experience of programming in a variety of languages / cfd 
codes etc. etc. (OK and how long is string).

I realise this is mighty vague but from the enthusiasm from a whole 
range of colleagues and the offers of people to provide all sorts of 
exciting data sets its something I'd really like to have a shot at!.

Many thanks, Nik

-- 
Dr Nikil Kapur
School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT
T 0113 3432152   F 0113 2349679   E n.kapur at leeds.ac.uk