[Paraview] File formats for particle visualization

[Moreland, Kenneth]

Any file format that holds unstructured grid or poly data and supports 0D cells (vertices, points, spheres, or whatever you want to call them) is sufficient.  If the particles remain consistent from one time step to the next, then I recommend the Exodus format because it has direct support for time and you can place everything in a single file.  However, Exodus assumes that the topology of your data does not change, so it does not directly support particles that are born or die.

If you do have particles that are born and die, I've heard of success with the EnSight format.  If at all possible, also write out "global ids" that uniquely identify the particles from one timestep to the next.  If you do not have that, it limits what ParaView can do with the particles.

-Ken


On 7/16/09 7:37 PM, "Scott, W Alan" <wascott at sandia.gov> wrote:

I have a user that runs particle physics simulations and wants to write this into files that ParaView can easily read.

What are good file formats for particle simulations?

Thanks,

Alan

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W. Alan Scott
ParaView Support Manager

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   ****      Kenneth Moreland
    ***      Sandia National Laboratories
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*** *** ***  email: kmorel at sandia.gov
**  ***  **  phone: (505) 844-8919
    ***      web:   http://www.cs.unm.edu/~kmorel

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