[vtk-developers] A new cell type for polyhedral meshes

[Brian Dotson]

Hi all, I am working with a group of CFD researchers that are using
ParaView to view their data.  Last year we investigated how ParaView
would handle polyhedral meshes.  I took their data and created a VTK
file that consisted of an unstructured grid with convex point sets for
cells.  This worked, but when the cell counts and complexities got
higher the performance dropped considerably. I started looking at this
problem again, and was wondering if a new VTK cell type would help this
problem. My reasoning is that when I am creating the convex point set
cells, I am throwing a lot of useful information away.  When I receive
the information from the CFD simulation I know the following: 1.  The
number of points in each face of the cell.2. What points make up each
face of the cell.3.  The points that make up the face are in a specific
order.4.  All of the points are on the surface, no internal points.5. 
The cell number on each side of the face.6.  The number of faces per
cell. I was thinking a cell that consisted of a set of faces might be
more efficient in our application.  Each face would consist of a list of
point in a specified order where the normal vector would point away from
the cell.   I am willing to do the work on this, but does this make
sense? Please give me your thoughts. Thanks, Brian DotsonNational Energy
Technology Laboratory 
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