[Paraview] Is Paraview the right program?

[Moreland, Kenneth]

I would only use an ASCII-based format if the data are small, but I
usually use the VTK legacy format as a quick-and-dirty approach. I find it
a bit easier to generate and read than the XML formats. If you get to the
point of creating larger or parallel meshes, you probably want to move to
a binary HDF5 format as Armin suggests.

At any rate, you can get documentation for both the VTK legacy and VTK XML
formats in this document:
http://www.paraview.org/Wiki/images/5/51/VTK-File-Formats.pdf

Hope that helps.

-Ken



On 3/25/14 7:47 AM, "Armin Wehrfritz" <dkxls23 at gmail.com> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>ParaView offers you a lot of visualisation and data handling options, so
>yes definitely the right choice. :)
>
>Concerning the file format:
>The VTK data-structures are well suited for such kind of data, however I
>personally find the learning curve of VTK rather steep. Meaning, it
>might be quite difficult to get started with this task.
>
>An alternative is to used a HDF5/XDMF file format. I got a simple HDF5
>writer rather quickly implemented, there are good tutorials on the web,
>and I generate the XDMF file in a post-processing step with a python
>script. (ParaView supports XDMF files very well.)
>Oh and yes, you can read HDF5 files conveniently with Matlab and Python
>too.
>
>In any case both options, HDF5/XDMF or VTK, are better than plain
>ascii-files. ;)
>
>Regards,
>Armin
>
>P.S.: Which language do you write the FEM program in?
>
>
>
>On 03/25/2014 11:33 AM, Marco Nawijn wrote:
>> Hello Florian,
>>
>> Yes! Paraview is definitely a good choice. I would also recommend to use
>> VTK for managing some of the FEM related datastructures. In particular,
>> I would recommend to use one or more of the grid/cell classes. This also
>> provides
>> you automatically with different export formats (see for example the
>> vtkXMLUnstructuredGridWriter).
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Marco
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 12:42 AM, Florian Schmidt <fslists at web.de
>> <mailto:fslists at web.de>> wrote:
>>
>>     Hello,
>>
>>     I want to write my own FEM program. And now I am looking for a
>>     visualization and post-processing tool.
>>
>>     What do you think: is paraview a good choice?
>>
>>
>>     Is there an ascii-fileformat you would recommend to use as output
>>     from the FEM program and as input for paraview?
>>
>>     Thanks,
>>     Florian
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