[Paraview] vtkTable and LineChart

Michael Jackson mike.jackson at bluequartz.net
Mon Nov 29 17:24:29 EST 2010 

Yes, I can see the data in ParaView after I mess around digging in the  
"Display" tab, clicking some checkbox, taking guess about what needs  
to be enabled/disabled..
   I was hoping my use-case would fall into the "Default" use case  
where the first column represented the x-axis and subsequent columns  
were y-axis values but I guess not this time. Yes, I agree that it  
does only take a few clicks here and there but you first have to know  
_what_ to click which is where the user experience is falling apart  
for me. I have to teach a bunch of users to click here and there in  
order to show their data.
    Along those lines maybe I am not really understanding how a "Line  
Chart" works. Maybe what I am really after is an "XY Scatter Plot" of  
my data?
    What would help me out would be what source file is the default  
value of using the cell indices as the x-axis set? for my builds which  
I distribute to my users maybe I can just set this to the other value  
"Use Data Array" instead?

Thanks
___________________________________________________________
Mike Jackson                      www.bluequartz.net
Principal Software Engineer       mike.jackson at bluequartz.net
BlueQuartz Software               Dayton, Ohio



On Nov 29, 2010, at 5:15 PM, pat marion wrote:

> That's correct, the data objects at the vtk level cannot influence  
> how the chart will be displayed.  It all happens in the gui &  
> servermanager level, at the proxy level.  Are you at least able to  
> see your data in the XY Line Chart?  It only takes two clicks in the  
> Display tab to assign the X axis.
>
> It would be convenient if there was some way for the data object to  
> provide a hint to gui.  Maybe we could make a rule that if an array  
> name ends with "xaxis_hint" or something, that could clue the gui to  
> use it automatically.
>
> Pat
>
> On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 4:47 PM, Michael Jackson <mike.jackson at bluequartz.net 
> > wrote:
> Thanks for more info.
>
>  I do in fact have "Time" for one of my plots so that is easy to  
> achieve. I just had to correctly set the name of the column from  
> "Time Values" to "Time" and that should work. The other plots  
> probably are more difficult at this point. I have Stress/Strain data  
> where I need the Stress on the x-axis and strain on the y-axis. I do  
> not think I am understanding how to set some value on the vtkTable  
> class that when finally passed over to the GUI layer will set the  
> some arbitrary column as the x-axis. I thought the proxy stuff was  
> all done on the GUI side of things? I guess I need just a bit more  
> hand holding.
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> Mike Jackson                      www.bluequartz.net
> Principal Software Engineer       mike.jackson at bluequartz.net
> BlueQuartz Software               Dayton, Ohio
>
>
>
> On Nov 29, 2010, at 4:31 PM, Marcus D. Hanwell wrote:
>
> Sorry, yes, I was in VTK world. There are a few column names with
> special meanings to ParaView that are hard coded in the proxy. You can
> get at the chart object if you wish to manipulate it directly, but you
> should be able to achieve everything you need to through the proxies.
>
> Marcus
>
> On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 4:28 PM, pat marion <pat.marion at kitware.com>  
> wrote:
> I think by default it will plot a line for each column in the  
> table.  It
> will use the cell value as the Y value, and the row index as the X  
> value.
> To change the behavior, you have to change two representation  
> properties:
>
>
> rep.UseIndexForXAxis = 0
>
> rep.XArrayName = 'foo'
>
> This will plot all all the columns, except use the "foo" column as  
> the X
> values.  That means the line for the "foo" column is still  
> displayed, and it
> will be a diagonal line.
>
> I just looked, and Paraview has one cheat hard coded- if there is a  
> column
> named "Time" or "arc_length" then it will be used automatically for  
> the X
> axis.
>
> Pat
>
> On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 4:11 PM, Michael Jackson
> <mike.jackson at bluequartz.net> wrote:
>
> Thanks for the idea. I was trying to figure out the flow from  
> reading the
> data into displaying the data hoping to reveal some sort of default or
> something. I was going to generate some fake CSV data and see how that
> reader does things hoping the CSV reader takes the first column as the
> x-axis.
> ___________________________________________________________
> Mike Jackson                      www.bluequartz.net
> Principal Software Engineer       mike.jackson at bluequartz.net
> BlueQuartz Software               Dayton, Ohio
>
>
>
> On Nov 29, 2010, at 4:08 PM, pat marion wrote:
>
> Hi Mike,
>
> I'm not up to speed with the current chart api so I can't answer your
> question... but maybe you could try doing it in the gui with python  
> trace
> enabled, then translate the generated python code into c++ for your  
> plugin?
>  Customizing the chart should be a matter of setting properties on the
> representation and view, the data object itself doesn't have much say.
>
> Pat
>
> On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 1:41 PM, Michael Jackson
> <mike.jackson at bluequartz.net> wrote:
> I have some XY data that I would like to plot in ParaView. I currently
> have a plugin that reads the data from our HDF5 file and into vtkTable
> objects. Along the lines of a "Line Chart 101" question how do I
> programmatically set the x-axis and y-axis columns?
>
> Thanks
> ___________________________________________________________
> Mike Jackson                      www.bluequartz.net
> Principal Software Engineer       mike.jackson at bluequartz.net
> BlueQuartz Software               Dayton, Ohio
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Powered by www.kitware.com
>
> Visit other Kitware open-source projects at
> http://www.kitware.com/opensource/opensource.html
>
> Please keep messages on-topic and check the ParaView Wiki at:
> http://paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView
>
> Follow this link to subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://www.paraview.org/mailman/listinfo/paraview
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Powered by www.kitware.com
>
> Visit other Kitware open-source projects at
> http://www.kitware.com/opensource/opensource.html
>
> Please keep messages on-topic and check the ParaView Wiki at:
> http://paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView
>
> Follow this link to subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://www.paraview.org/mailman/listinfo/paraview
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Powered by www.kitware.com
>
> Visit other Kitware open-source projects at
> http://www.kitware.com/opensource/opensource.html
>
> Please keep messages on-topic and check the ParaView Wiki at:
> http://paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView
>
> Follow this link to subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://www.paraview.org/mailman/listinfo/paraview
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Powered by www.kitware.com
>
> Visit other Kitware open-source projects at http://www.kitware.com/opensource/opensource.html
>
> Please keep messages on-topic and check the ParaView Wiki at: http://paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView
>
> Follow this link to subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://www.paraview.org/mailman/listinfo/paraview
>

More information about the ParaView mailing list