[Paraview] File format for CFD

[Bart Janssens]

Hi all,

I want to get data from our finite element CFD solver into paraview, so I'd 
like to write an exporter that writes in the format that is best suited and 
well supported by existing paraview readers. It should be possible to read 
large data sets in parallel, with good performance.

Currently, I'm considering using the VTK file format with a .pvd xml at the top 
level, but I have some concerns:
- When importing data using EnSight, it names the zones correctly, i.e. if you 
had a group of 2D cells called "inlet", it would show up in the tree and can 
be filtered with ExtractBlock. Is it possible to assign names using the VTK/pvd 
format?
- The boundary zones would have to be separate blocks, as I understand. Is it 
possible for them to reuse the point data of the volume mesh? In our solver, 
the points are stored only once, and different zones can point to indices in 
one big array of coordinates.
- When using multiple blocks as a result of parallelization, are points at the 
boundaries between blocks duplicated? If not, how is this specified?

Kind regards,

Bart

-- 
Bart Janssens
Captain, Assistant
Royal Military Academy of Belgium
Department of Mechanical Engineering