[vtkusers] File format with time support to visualise OpenFOAM output

[Piotr Domagalski]

Hi all,

We are using VTK to visualise outputs from an OpenFOAM CFD simulation 
saved as VTK (legacy) files. Currently we use ParaView but we will need 
to use VTK directly in Python as this is how VTK is integrated into our 
application.

As far as I know ParaView uses a vtkFileSeriesReader to make the VTK 
legacy files "support" time. Now the problem is that I would need to 
load all those simulation files (time steps) into VTK with the use of 
Python API and still have full VTK time support (i.e. to use time 
interpolation).

What would be the best way to go?

I suppose it'd be the easiest to load files that natively support time 
in VTK but I cannot find a list of those. The only source of information 
on that topic seems to be Time in ParaView presentation 
(http://paraview.org/Wiki/images/2/20/IEEE08_Time-In-ParaView.ppt). This 
document suggests that only Exodus and Xdmf support time nativaly, but 
unfortunately I cannot export OpenFOAM simulation to any of these 
formats. So am I left with implementing something like 
vtkFileSeriesReader in Python on my own and using it with legacy VTK 
files from "foamToVTK" tool?

All the best,

-- 
Piotr Domagalski
Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center