[Paraview] redundant information in the VTK XML file format

[Shi Jin]

Hi there,

I have been using the VTK XML unstructured grid format (pvtu and vtu) for my fluid dynamics simulations. It worked fairly well with paraview but I think it stores a lot of redundant information and I am wondering if there is a way to simplify it.

1. My grid is fixed once created. I am dumping velocity and pressure field at many steps but in each vtu file, I have to have the same grid information such as vertex positions, cell connectivity, offset and cell type.  What I would love to have is to dump the grid at the beginning of the simulation and then only dump the field of velocity and pressure at later time steps. To make it work, we need a way to include the grid information stored in another file, just like the #include statement in C++ or \input in Latex.

2. All my cells are of the same type (10-vertex Tetrahedron in my case). So the "types" are the same constant 10 and "offsets" are constant increments. What is now in my file are long lists of these boring numbering for each cell, which I would love to have a way to get rid of. 

I would appreciate any help.
Thanks.

Shi