[Paraview] Reading Ply files

[Painchaud, Stephen]

The tetrahedralize filter worked, thank you.

It is unfortunate that concave polygons are not handled well, as I expect that to be a common need trying to visualize 2D slices through irregular formation layers. I also note that a polygon can't be selected if it is in the concave region of another polygon. So far I have found no free PLY viewer that can handle my input 100%. I am looking for a way to exchange 2D model information between modeling codes. I have just completed the coding to generate the polygons, and I chose ASCII ply as an easy format to write to. Maybe I need to rethink my format and viewer.

-----Original Message-----
From: David E DeMarle [mailto:dave.demarle at kitware.com] 
Sent: Friday, September 09, 2011 9:54 AM
To: Painchaud, Stephen
Cc: paraview at paraview.org
Subject: Re: [Paraview] Reading Ply files

That's the old "openGL doesn't handle concave polygons so neither do
we because doing so would slow down the common case for the sake of
the rare one" feature.

Apply the tetrahedralize filter to break those up into convex polygons
and it will look right.

David E DeMarle
Kitware, Inc.
R&D Engineer
21 Corporate Drive
Clifton Park, NY 12065-8662
Phone: 518-881-4909



On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 8:30 PM, Painchaud, Stephen
<Stephen.Painchaud at bakerhughes.com> wrote:
> I have created a ply file, but I am having problems viewing it in ParaView.
>  My faces are polygons with up to 42 segments. I have 12 faces in total,
> each a solid color. If I load the complete file the polygons are messed up,
> but all the vertices look correct. In wireframe view I see extra connections
> that should not be there.
>
>
>
> If I retain just one face (and all the vertices), I can get a very nice
> wireframe view, but the surface view is not a solid color and strays outside
> the polygon segments. I can create 12 separate files, each containing one of
> the faces, and each one looks good in the wireframe view.
>
>
>
> Am I missing some setting in ParaView? Have I found a bug? I am new to the
> program. I have attached some examples, the full file is formation.ply and
> face 12 is in the other file. Face 12 is especially bad about showing
> features outside the segments.
>
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