VTK/Learning VTK

VTK is an extremely powerful and versatile tool, but has a reputation for having a steep learning curve. Here, we hope to organize the resources that may be of use to both VTK users and developers in understanding and using VTK effectively. The key to successfully using VTK are:

1. understanding the structure of the object-oriented hierarchy and
2. understanding its pipeline architecture.

If you are new to VTK, you might want to check out:

• External Tutorials - presentations on VTK by users and developers around the world. This should be helpful to 'get started' with VTK.

Once you have done that, the best way to learn VTK in detail may be:

1. Get the The VTK Textbook and The VTK Users Guide.
2. actually see/write VTK code. This is a great way of learning VTK, and if there is something which you wish to know in greater detail, please have a look at the very well organized and commented source code for VTK. The following resources may also help you:
   1. Examples - Short code examples demonstrating how many of the VTK classes can be used. This is quite an extensive collection.
   2. Tutorials - Slightly longer than the examples, these tutorials explain concepts and demonstrate more complicated tasks in VTK. Note that these cover only certain topics that are not clearly elucidated in the The VTK Users Guide and are not meant as a 'getting started' manual for absolute beginners.
3. More resources available to help the user are :
   1. The VTK Doxygen Man Pages
   2. The VTK Users Mailing List
   3. Frequently asked questions (FAQ)