[Paraview] name blocks or sets and export them in X3D files

[Kristian Sons]

Dear Pierre,

I guess now I understood your intention and here some answers (I hope this
is not too off topic for other ParaView users):

- The X3D exporter just exports the results of the VTK pipeline you
configured using VTK
- So if you implement some kind of "Switch" by grouping two sources and
than extract one of them using VTK filters, this functionality will not be
mapped to X3D, just the active result of the pipeline gets exported. It
would be possible to "emulate" the VTK pipeline to some degree using X3D,
but this needs much more logic than the current exporter.
- Some of the functionalities (like naming the sources) is a ParaView
specific functionality. The X3D exporter has access to the VTK data
structure only, so you i.e. won't find them in the export

So the answer from the Web3D forum thread is not wrong. To pick up your
example:
1. Create the box and the cone.
2. Export the scene to X3D. You will find three shapes. The first is the
center actor that is in the same renderer (you can deactivate this actor in
View->Show Center). The two other shapes are the box and the cone.
3. Surround the two shapes with a switch node and then you can choose one
or the other to display using the whichChoice attribute.

Best regards,
Kristian

On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:56:38 +0100, Pierre JUILLARD
<pierre.juillard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Kristian,
> 
> I thank you for your answer.
> I know understand a bit better how it works.
> 
> I was actually asking to guys of Web3D how should be managed a
"mutli-part"
> scene in X3D in this
> thread<http://www.web3d.org/message_boards/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2084>,
> and I got the answer of using X3D <Switch> which I'm not sure is the
> correct
> answer.
> 
> What you describe is interesting and I will have a deeper analysis of it.
> 
> Thanks for you help.
> Best regards,
> 
> 
> Pierre
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 2010/3/11 Kristian Sons <kristian.sons at supporting.com>
> 
>>
>> Hi Pierre,
>>
>> though Berk answered your questions already, Christophe Mouton from EDF
>> asked me to add some details.
>> I contributed the rewrite of the X3D exporter and the binary X3D
exporter
>> on behalf of EDF.
>>
>> The X3D exporter is not aware of the composite data types of VTK. It
>> works
>> roughly like this:
>>
>> 1. Get all the actors from a vtkRenderWindow (it implements the
>> vtkExporter
>> interface)
>> 2. Each Actor is mapped to a X3D <Shape>
>> 3. Each vtkProperty/vtkTexture is mapped to a X3D <Appearance>,
>> <Material>,
>> <PixelTexture>
>> 4. Each geometry is either a vtkPolyData or is converted to vtkPoylData
>> using the vtkGeometryFilter
>> 5. The vtkPolyData is mapped to X3D <IndexedFaceSet>, <LineSet>,
>> <PointSet>
>>
>> It's generally not a big task to add composite support to the exporter,
>> the
>> Appearance could be reused using the USE/DEF semantic of X3D.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Kristian
>>
>>
>>
>>