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

[Takuya OSHIMA]

Try this.
http://www.vtk.org/doc/nightly/html/classvtkPOpenFOAMReader.html

Takuya OSHIMA, Ph.D.
Faculty of Engineering, Niigata University
8050 Ikarashi-Ninocho, Nishi-ku, Niigata, 950-2181, JAPAN

From: Piotr Domagalski <piotr.domagalski at man.poznan.pl>
Subject: [vtkusers] File format with time support to visualise OpenFOAM output
Date: Mon, 28 May 2012 15:54:20 +0200

> 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
>