[vtkusers] How to store time-varying positions?

[Karin Faulhaber]

Hi,

my dataset consists of points with time-varying positions:

ID	time	x	y	z
1	0	x0	y0	z0
	1	x1	y1	z1
	2	x2	y2	z2
	...

2	0	x0	y0	z0
	1	x1	y1	z1
	2	x2	y2	z2
	...
...

and so on. I also have some attributes attached to the points
themselves, independent of the current position. And I have attributes
attached to every time step of every point.
I thought of creating a vtkPoints with all the positions, and
associating vtkScalars for ID, time step and attributes, creating from
them polyVertex cells according to the point ID, and have some more
vtkScalars attached to the cells.

The problem is: I have to be able to visualize different combinations of
the points and the time steps, say: show all points from ID = 3 to ID =
100 at every time step between 0 and 15, except for the ID = 5 and the
time steps 7 and 9. This will depend on user interaction.

Apparently I can't make some of the cells of a vtkPolyData invisible,
only Actors can be made invisible. Of course I could create a
vtkPolyData with a vtkVertex for each of the pointIDs and each of the
time steps, so I'll have lots of Actors in the end, but as far as I
could see from the archive this isn't recommendable.

How can I store this dataset? I've been thinking about that for DAYS now
without success; any idea is really appreciated!

Regards
Karin


-- 
Karin Faulhaber
Universitaet Karlsruhe
Institut fuer Photogrammetrie und Fernerkundung (IPF)
Englerstr. 7 
76128 Karlsruhe

Tel: 0721/608-3676
E-Mail: faulhaber at ipf.uni-karlsruhe.de