[Paraview] Writer plugin with selection of data arrays to output

[Cory Quammen]

Hi Sergey,

I'm not aware of another writer that has the behavior you describe of
saving out specified data arrays. As a result, there isn't any
existing code to select the data arrays to be saved. There are a
number of readers that do support which arrays to load, but it's not
really possible to reuse that infrastructure without some additional
ParaView development work to support selecting arrays to be written.

A workaround would be to use a Pass Data Arrays filter to select the
data arrays, then save the Pass Data Arrays output to your custom
writer.

Hope that helps,
Cory

On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 5:00 AM, Sergey Alexandrov
<alexandrov88 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am trying to implement a sink algorithm (writer) to output point clouds in
> my custom format. The points may have multiple data
> arrays, and the writer should provide the user with an option to select
> which of these arrays are to be output.
>
> Unfortunately, I am not able to find any wiki pages or articles that explain
> how to implement such a writer. Also, I do not find any
> existing writers with this functionality. The most similar things I found
> are:
>
> 1) AMR base particles reader. It provides a facility to select which data
> arrays are to be read from a file. Basically, when the user
> sets the filename, the reader loads the meta-information about available
> arrays from the file, and then these are displayed in
> ParaView properties panel. The user can tick the arrays he wants and press
> "Apply" to read. I can not figure out how to apply this
> in my writer, because the only extension point for writers is the
> WriteData() function. It is called after the user has pressed the
> "Save" button, which is too late. In fact, I want to "inject" some code
> between the moment the user chose the output filename (and
> hence the writer to use), and the moment a dialog window with the properties
> of the writer is shown.
>
> 2) Wiki page on writing readers. There is an example how make a drop-down
> list to select which input array to process. Perhaps
> I could add this to the writer, however it does seem to support only a
> single array choice, whereas I need multiple.
>
> I would be very grateful for suggestions on how to implement the
> functionality I need. Examples of existing readers would be
> great. Or if there is definitely no "official" clean way to implement this,
> please also let me know.
>
> Cheers,
> Sergey
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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
>
> Search the list archives at: http://markmail.org/search/?q=ParaView
>
> Follow this link to subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://public.kitware.com/mailman/listinfo/paraview
>



-- 
Cory Quammen
Staff R&D Engineer
Kitware, Inc.