VTK/Examples/Cxx/Utilities/FileOutputWindow

This example shows how to pipe error output to a text file instead of the usual vtk pop-up window.

FileOutputWindow.cxx

#include <vtkFileOutputWindow.h>
#include <vtkXMLPolyDataReader.h>
#include <vtkSmartPointer.h>

int main(int, char *[])
{
  vtkSmartPointer<vtkFileOutputWindow> fileOutputWindow = 
      vtkSmartPointer<vtkFileOutputWindow>::New();
  fileOutputWindow->SetFileName( "output.txt" );

  // Note that the SetInstance function is a static member of vtkOutputWindow.
  vtkOutputWindow::SetInstance(fileOutputWindow);

  // This causes an error intentionally (file name not specified) - this error will be written to the file output.txt
  vtkSmartPointer<vtkXMLPolyDataReader> reader = 
      vtkSmartPointer<vtkXMLPolyDataReader>::New();
  reader->Update();

  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

Please try the new VTKExamples website.

CMakeLists.txt

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8)

PROJECT(FileOutputWindow)

find_package(VTK REQUIRED)
include(${VTK_USE_FILE})

add_executable(FileOutputWindow MACOSX_BUNDLE FileOutputWindow.cxx)

if(VTK_LIBRARIES)
  target_link_libraries(FileOutputWindow ${VTK_LIBRARIES})
else()
  target_link_libraries(FileOutputWindow vtkHybrid vtkWidgets)
endif()

Download and Build FileOutputWindow

Click here to download FileOutputWindow. and its CMakeLists.txt file.

Once the tarball FileOutputWindow.tar has been downloaded and extracted,

cd FileOutputWindow/build 

• If VTK is installed:

cmake ..

• If VTK is not installed but compiled on your system, you will need to specify the path to your VTK build:

cmake -DVTK_DIR:PATH=/home/me/vtk_build ..

Build the project:

make

and run it:

./FileOutputWindow

WINDOWS USERS PLEASE NOTE: Be sure to add the VTK bin directory to your path. This will resolve the VTK dll's at run time.