[vtk-developers] Charts in VTK and ParaView

[Eric E. Monson]

Hey Marcus,

Thanks for filling us in on the new Charts progress.

I was going to try playing around with it today, but I tend to do my prototyping in Python and I found that with (today's) CVS VTK I couldn't access any of the new charts API classes.

Are they not wrapped in Python, or is it likely I'm just doing something wrong?

Thanks, 
-Eric

------------------------------------------------------
Eric E Monson
Duke Visualization Technology Group


On Feb 16, 2010, at 1:33 PM, Marcus D. Hanwell wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I wanted to give a summary of the progress made with charts in VTK and 
> ParaView. Over the last couple of weeks I have been working on integrating the 
> new VTK/OpenGL based charts into ParaView. I have the necessary proxies and 
> filters in place so that you can now select the columns of the table to be 
> plotted. This work is all in VTK/ParaView CVS head.
> 
> http://www.vtk.org/Wiki/VTK/Charts/ChartAPI#Newer_Screenshot_in_ParaView
> 
> I have been working on achieving feature parity with the existing line charts. 
> So the vtkChartXY class now contains functions to add and manage the plots. 
> The axes can automatically calculate "pretty numbers" to be used for tick 
> locations/marks. I have also added line stippling in addition to the coloring, 
> and the mouse interaction features (using vtkContextScene) allow zooming and 
> panning as you would expect.
> 
> You can also select the X column to be used, or use the index of the array. 
> This is all exposed in the ParaView interface under the XY Chart 
> (EXPERIMENTAL) view type. I am currently adding some facilities to choose 
> colors automatically and place a legend on the chart. This is all exposed in 
> the VTK API, and it is possible to do more in that API than can is currently 
> exposed in the ParaView GUI.
> 
> The classes in VTK/Charts, specifically vtkChart* and vtkPlot* expose much of 
> this functionality. Mouse interaction is now handled by the vtkContextScene 
> class, with panning and zomming support already present.
> 
> Selection support will require some additional hooks, but is something I hope 
> to add in soon. Work on a new Mark API should help us to generalize how 
> multiple arrays can be mapped onto plots in charts (such as color, mark size, 
> etc).
> 
> I would appreciate feedback on this work as it currently stands. I will be 
> working away to flash out the holes I see for ParaView and a general line chart 
> display. I will also be fixing bugs, adding tests, and hopefully exposing a few 
> of the new features in the ParaView GUI (such as scientific style axes - at the 
> origin as you pan around).
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Marcus
> -- 
> Marcus D. Hanwell, Ph.D.
> R&D Engineer, Kitware Inc.
> (518) 881-4937
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