VTK/Examples/Cxx/PolyData/MiscPointData

This demo attaches a vector (in this case a float vector of length 1) to each point in a polydata.

MiscPointData.cxx

#include <vtkCellData.h>
#include <vtkDoubleArray.h>
#include <vtkPoints.h>
#include <vtkPolyData.h>
#include <vtkPointData.h>
#include <vtkSmartPointer.h>
#include <vtkXMLPolyDataReader.h>
#include <vtkPolyDataNormals.h>
#include <vtkFloatArray.h>
#include <vtkMath.h>
#include <string>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  // Parse command line arguments
  if(argc != 2)
    {
    std::cout << "Required arguments: Filename" << std::endl;
    return EXIT_FAILURE;
    }

  // Get filename from command line
  std::string filename = argv[1]; //first command line argument

  // Read the file
  vtkSmartPointer<vtkXMLPolyDataReader> reader = 
    vtkSmartPointer<vtkXMLPolyDataReader>::New();
  std::cout << "Reading " << filename << std::endl;
  reader->SetFileName(filename.c_str());
  reader->Update();

  // Extract the polydata
  vtkSmartPointer<vtkPolyData> polydata = reader->GetOutput();

  // Get the number of points in the polydata
  vtkIdType idNumPointsInFile = polydata->GetNumberOfPoints();

  // Add distances to each point
  vtkSmartPointer<vtkFloatArray> distances =
    vtkSmartPointer<vtkFloatArray>::New();
  distances->SetNumberOfComponents(1);
  distances->SetName("Distances");
	
  for (vtkIdType i = 0; i < idNumPointsInFile; i++)
    {	
    distances->InsertNextValue(vtkMath::Random(0.0,1.0));
    }

  polydata->GetPointData()->AddArray(distances);
		
  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

Please try the new VTKExamples website.

CMakeLists.txt

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8)

PROJECT(MiscPointData)

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

add_executable(MiscPointData MACOSX_BUNDLE MiscPointData.cxx)

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

Download and Build MiscPointData

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

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

cd MiscPointData/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:

./MiscPointData

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.