[Paraview] Creating a surface along a complex path

[Tim Gallagher]

Hi,

I had an idea I would like to explore but I'm not sure the right way to do it. I have a 3D vtkMultiblockDataset that is composed of curvilinear structured blocks. Let's say I create a line source with s = f(x,y,z). This line source can have a normal vector at each point that is confined to a particular plane (so for example, if I have s = x @ y = 0, z = 0 there are 2 normals of s confined to the x-y plane -- (0,1,0) and (0,-1,0)). I would like to create a slice where the local normal of the slice is oriented with one of those two normals (it doesn't matter which since a slice is infinitely thin). 

To give my actual example -- I have a fluid flow and I place a single streamline seed and generate the streamline. In this case, the streamline has constant z coordinates and is a function of x,y. This streamline represents the core of my flow. I would like to extract a slice whose profile (side view) is this streamline. 

And depending on whether that looks cool or not, I would like to try applying a ribbon to my streamline so I now get a rotated shape based on the local rotation in the flow, and then I would like to extract a slice that is locally normal to the ribbon. 

Is there a filter or set of filters that could do this? Do I need to figure out how to write my own to do it?

Thanks,

Tim