[vtkusers] Please help.

[Elvis Dowson]

Hi Femi,
		Here are some steps to get your started. If you get stuck, send an  
email and will try to help you out.

Download VTK

You can start by going to http://www.vtk.org/get-software.php and  
download the vtk sources. Download the vtk-5.2.1.zip package. Also  
download the VTK data for running the examples vtkdata-5.2.1.zip.

Download CMake

The vtk system will require the CMake package to create makefiles for  
your specific platform or IDE (e.g. Microsoft Visual Studio). So go to http://www.cmake.org/cmake/resources/software.html 
  and download the CMake installed cmake-2.6.2-win32-x86.zip

Download ActiveTCL

Most of the VTK examples are written using tcl and C/C++. So, to  
quickly run some of the samples you will need to have TCL installed.  
You can download it from http://www.activestate.com/Products/activetcl/index.mhtml 
. Download the AS package for Windows.

Build VTK from sources

VTK is a set of C++ classes, with wrappers provided to interface it  
with other interpreted languages like Tcl and Java. So, the core VTK  
classes run at native speed, even when interfaced with Tcl or Java.

You first need to compile the VTK sources and create the VTK libraries  
(either static or dynamic link libraries). VTK uses the CMake system,  
which is cross platform make  system, to generate a platform specific  
make file, in your case for Windows, probably using Visual Studio.

When configuring VTK with CMake, you will provide options, such as  
whether you want to create the Tcl, Java or Python language bindings,  
etc.

See this link for more information on how to do this: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~jli023/vtk/BuildandinstallVTKbinaries.htm

Its a bit out-dated, but the overall procedure remains the same.

Once you complete this, CMake will create a Visual Studio project and  
you can open it and build the VTK libraries.

Using VTK

You can quickly check out the VTK examples by running the Tcl scripts,  
or you can compile one of the C/C++ examples. When trying to create a  
C/C++ VTK application, be aware that you need to specify the path to  
the required VTK include files and the VTK library files.

So, in essence, you need to write you C++ application that uses the  
VTK libraries, and link to those libraries.

At this stage, I would highly recommend ordering the VTK books. It is  
very nicely written and will save you a lot of time. VTK is a great  
system. The books you should consider buying are
a. The VTK User Guide
b. The Visualization Toolkit - 4th Edition.


Best regards,

Elvis Dowson
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