[vtkusers] ivtk: A useful Python-VTK module.

[Prabhu Ramachandran]

hi,

A few months back I wrote a small module that I thought would be
useful to folks who use VTK from Python.  I made it part of MayaVi.
The module is called ivtk.  I just thought I'd let you folks know
about it so you can use it if you ever need something that's free and
does something like it.  To summarize what it provides:

    (*) An easy to use VTK actor viewer that has menus to save the
    scene, change background, show a help browser, show a VTK pipeline
    browser etc.    

    (*) A simple class documentation search tool/browser that lets you
    _search_ for arbitrary strings in the VTK class documentation and
    lets you browse the VTK class documentation.  This uses the
    internal doc strings of the vtk classes, so you dont need to have
    the html docs installed.

    (*) A relatively easy to use GUI to configure arbitrary VTK
    objects using the vtkPipeline.ConfigVtkObj module.

The best thing about the module is that you can use it off the Python
interpreter!  This means that you can experiment with VTK very easily,
read the docs and configure objects.  Further, thanks to the Python
interpreter you can edit the pipeline dynamically and change things
easily!  The module and its usage are described in some detail over
here:

     http://mayavi.sourceforge.net/docs/guide/x799.html

You need to install MayaVi in order to use it.  If you already use
Python and VTK then installing MayaVi is very easy thanks to
distutils.

This post might sound like a shamless plug but I hope it isn't seen in
that light. :) I wrote the module in the hope that its useful to those
who use VTK and Python.

Have fun!
prabhu