[vtkusers] InfoVis with VTK

[David Duke]

Seraphin Lampion wrote:
> Hello,
> I am interested in all works done for making information visualization 
> with VTK. Especially I am interested in any pointer addressing the 
> following points:
>  - data representation in VTK, esp. relationnal and/or time dependant 
> information representation (how to deal with time series? how to encode 
> graphs?)
>  - TreeMaps implementation in VTK
>  - graph visualization with VTK (in addition to the vtkGraphLayoutFilter 
> class)?

I made some modules (and datatype extensions) for doing graph and tree 
visualization in VTK, and you are welcome to take these as a starting 
point.  You can get the code + some documents at

www.cs.bath.ac.uk/~vtk/

**HOWEVER**

(1)  The approach I took is complicated.  It was based on viewing cells 
as a "specialized" form of relation, and then making a model in which 
different kinds of cells(relationships) could be implemented by 
subtyping.  I'm working (subject to other constraints) on a much simpler 
alternative.

(2)  There are certainly mistakes still in the code, not helped by the 
complexity my re-inventing the wheel in places.

There has been work at Stanford on an environment called "Rivet" that 
has some similarities to VTK (it is not, however, a VTK extension), but 
which brings out some of the issues.  Apart from finding the right level 
of abstraction for representing the data, another difficulty is linking 
actions on actors in the interface back to appropriate "chunks" of data 
earlier in the pipeline, for example selecting a sub-graph and then 
doing something with it.

That said, comments and criticisms are always appreciated.

David.