[Paraview] Paraview file format documentations

[Moreland, Kenneth]

> I am rather new to paraview (just worked through the tutorial from
> http://paraview.org/Wiki/SC07_ParaView_Tutorial - cool!) and I am
> planning to use paraview as visualization tool for my own solver.

Glad it was helpful.

> I find it hard to figure out which file format to use, so I am looking
> for some advice.
>
> Q: My solver generates 2D unstructered mesh data together with
> field data (stress, strain, pressure, velocity, etc.) over this grid.
> Which file format is most appropriate to use for this?
> Any library you would recommend?

The Exodus format would probably be a pretty good fit for that.  I'm not saying that Exodus is the absolute best format ever, but I certainly prefer it over the VTK formats for unstructured grids.  Also the Exodus reader in ParaView is pretty good; we've spent a lot of time on that.

>
> Q: Is http://www.vtk.org/pdf/file-formats.pdf the only information
> publicly available about vtk file formats or is there other information
> available?

The VTK User's Guide has some information.  For the legacy formats, it's the same, but it also has information about the XML formats.

>
> Q: I guesss the ex2 - file format used in the above-mentioned tutorial
> the same which is described in
> http://endo.sandia.gov/SEACAS/Documentation/exodusII.pdf.
> Am I right?

Yup.

>
> Q: Searching the source code with the command
> find . -type f -exec grep -l vtkExodusIIWriter {} \;
> yields
> ./Servers/ServerManager/Resources/writers.xml
> ./VTK/Parallel/vtkExodusIIWriter.h
> ./VTK/Parallel/CMakeLists.txt
> ./VTK/Parallel/vtkExodusIIWriter.cxx
> ./VTK/Hybrid/vtkExodusModel.h
> ./VTK/Hybrid/vtkExodusReader.h
> ./VTK/Hybrid/vtkExodusIIReader.h
> ./VTK/Hybrid/vtkExodusReader.cxx
>
> At first glance I did not find code which _uses_ class vtkExodusIIWriter.
> Can you provide a usage example for writing a small
> unstructured 2D grid  with simulation data using vtk classes.

ParaView uses the Exodus writer, but that does not really help you for example code.  Nominally, you just need to set its input, give it a filename, and call the Write method.

If you are not using VTK to create the data in the first place, it may make sense to use the Exodus library directly to write your data to a file.

-Ken