ParaView

ParaView is an open-source, multi-platform application designed to visualize data sets of size varying from small to very large. The goals of the ParaView project include developing an open-source, multi-platform visualization application that support distributed computational models to process large data sets. It has an open, flexible, and intuitive user interface. Furthermore, ParaView is built on an extensible architecture based on open standards. ParaView runs on distributed and shared memory parallel as well as single processor systems and has been succesfully tested on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, IBM Blue Gene, Cray XT3 and various Unix workstations and clusters. Under the hood, ParaView uses the Visualization Toolkit as the data processing and rendering engine and has a user interface written using the Qt cross-platform application framework.

The goal of this Wiki is to provide up-to-date documentation maintained by the developer and user communities. As such, we welcome volunteers that would like to contribute. If you are interested in contributing, please contact us on the ParaView mailing list http://public.kitware.com/mailman/listinfo/paraview.

You can find more information about ParaView on the ParaView web site: http://paraview.org. For more help, check out http://paraview.org/New/help.html.

Real world concept -> Paraview terminology map

Often new users may say "Surely Paraview can do X... but I can't find it!". This terminology map should help!

Complete list/description of paraview filters

If you're looking through the list of filters in paraview, you may want to know what they all do! Here is a complete list.

Short HowTos

These howtos are instructions for some common operations.

Description/Explanation of Sources

• Point Source - Generate a set of NumberOfPoints random points inside a sphere of radius Radius centered at Point. This is an interface for the VTK filter http://www.vtk.org/doc/nightly/html/classvtkPointSource.html#_details

• Plane - the plane is specified by three corners. This allows the flexibility of having a non-rectangular planar patch. However, it is quite confusing to make simple planes. You can vote for an easier to use plane source at http://paraview.uservoice.com/pages/11350-general/suggestions/360110-easier-to-use-plane-source?ref=title.

1. Origin - The origin of the plane to be created. When viewing the plane orthogonally, this could be interpreted as the "lower left corner" of the plane.
2. Point1 - the "bottom right" corner of the plane.
3. Point2 - the "top left" corner of the plane.
4. X Resolution - how many divisions will be created in the X direction. You can see what is going on by switching to wireframe mode.
5. Y Resolution - how many divisions will be created in the Y direction. You can see what is going on by switching to wireframe mode.
6. The Apply button must be pressed before the plane will be generated.

• Line - hover the mouse and press 'p'. This seems to move the closest endpoint of the line to the current mouse position.

• Ruler - acts just like the line source - hover the mouse and press 'p' to snap the nearest endpoint of the ruler's indicator line to the current mouse position. The distance between the two points is displayed.

• Sphere - create a sphere by creating a discrete set of points on the surface of a sphere and then creating a mesh on them.

1. Center - the coordinate of the center of the sphere
2. Radius - the radius of the sphere
3. Theta Resolution - how many points to use on cross sections of the sphere in the XY plane. You can see what is going on by switching to wireframe mode.
4. Start Theta - the angle from +x (in the counter clockwise direction) in the XY plane to start creating points on the sphere. If this is > 0, there will be a "cut" out of the sphere
5. End Theta - the angle from +x (in the clockwise direction) in the XY plane to finish creating points on the sphere. If this is < 360, there will be a "cut" out of the sphere
6. Phi Resolution - how many points to use (minus the poles) on the cross sections of the sphere in the XZ plane. You can see what is going on by switching to wireframe mode.
7. Start Phi - the angle from +z to start the sphere. There will be a missing "cap" on the top of the sphere if this is >0.
8. End Phi - the angle from -z to finish the sphere. There will be a missing "cap" on the bottom of the sphere if this is < 180.

• Arrow - Create an arrow. The arrow always has length 1. It is commonly used as a glyph source, so the final length of the arrow is determined by a scaling factor. To change the size of an arrow, use the "scaling" in the display tab of the object inspector or apply a transform filter.

1. Tip Resolution - The number of faces which are used to draw the tip. The more faces, the "rounder" the tip will look.
2. Tip Radius - The width of the tip.
3. Tip Length - The proportional size of the arrow tip to the whole arrow.
4. Shaft Resolution - The number of faces used to draw the cylinder (shaft) of the arrow. The more faces, the "rounder" the cylinder will be.
5. Shaft Radius - The width of the cylinder (shaft) of the arrow.

ParaView In Use

• ParaView In Action

Some examples of how ParaView is used

• ParaView Screenshots

Screenshots generated by ParaView

Documentation

Compile/Install Download ParaView Instructions for downloading source as well as pre-compiled binaries for common platforms. Building and Installation instructions Compiling and installing ParaView from source. Server Setup ParaView Server Setup Configuring your cluster to act as a ParaView server. ParaView Server Startup Using GUI Using the ParaView client to start the servers. Server Configuration Customizing server startup and connection processes using XML-based configuration scripts. Generating Data Generating data How to write out data in a format that Paraview understands Python Scripting Python Scripting * updated to 3.6 Scripting ParaView using python Python Programmable Filter Generating/Processing data using python. Python GUI Tools * new in 3.6 Using the python shell interface in paraview Python recipes for ParaView SNL ParaView 3 Python Tutorials Beginning and advanced tutorial sets, each presented as 2 hour classes by Sandia National Laboratories Animation Animating legacy VTK file series Animating file series. Unattended saving of animation Saving animations on the server without client connection. Animation View Using Animation View to setup animations. Animating the Camera * new in 3.6 Creating animations involving camera movements. Plugins Extending ParaView Using Plugins Using and writing new plugins to extend ParaView's functionality. Extending ParaView at Compile Time Including extensions into ParaView at compile time. Plugin Wizard A simple wizard application developed by MIRARCO that provides boilerplate code for some of the most common plugin types.		Other Features Color Palettes * new in 3.6 Creating visualizations for Print and Screen. Manually Creating a Colormap Specify a colormap and save it as an xml file for later use. Camera and Property Linking Synchronizing filters, clip planes, camera etc. Restarted Simulation Readers Loading restarted data for different file formats. Custom Filters Packaging pipelines into a single composite. Data Selection Selecting and focusing on subset of a dataset. Exporting Scenes Exporting scenes as VRML, X3D etc. Backwards compatibility in state files Backwards compatibility for ParaView state files (*.pvsm). ParaView Settings Files The locations where ParaView saves settings. Statistical analysis * coming in 3.6.2 Computing statistics and using them to assess datasets. Image Compressor Configuration How to configure ParaView's image compressor for use during remote rendering. Books and Tutorials The ParaView Guide The official ParaView guide available from Kitware. The ParaView Tutorial An introductory and comprehensive tutorial. IEEE Vis09 ParaView Tutorial Slides for the advanced topics tutorial by Sandia, Kitware, and LANL. IEEE Cluster 2009 ParaView Tutorial Slides on topics for installing and using ParaView on visualization clusters. SNL ParaView 3 Tutorials Beginning and advanced tutorial sets, each presented as 2 hour classes by Sandia National Laboratories IEEE Vis08 ParaView Tutorial Slides for the advanced topics tutorial by Sandia, Kitware, and CSCS. HPCMP DAAC - Information & Tutorials on ParaView . This Wiki is full of useful information and tutorials about ParaView. Related Publications ParaView related books, articles and papers ParaView 2 Tutorials		Design & Implementation Testing design ParaView GUI Testing framework. Block Hierarchy Meta Data Providing details about blocks, hierarchies, assemblies etc. to the client. Multiple views Details on handling multiple views in client-server framework. Composite Datasets Dealing with composite datasets in VTK. Representations and Views Understanding ParaView's views and representations. Time in ParaView Understanding Time implementation. Cross-compiling ParaView Compiling ParaView and VTK on BlueGene and Cray Xt3/Catamount. Selection Implementation in VTK and ParaView III Suggested online help documentation changes Suggestions for online help documentation changes. ParaView based Applications StreamingParaView Documentation about the StreamingParaView application. Miscellaneous Terminology Disambiguation The Kitware Source Quarterly newsletter for developers designed to deliver detailed technical articles related to Kitware's open source products including ParaView. Book Errata More information about ParaView

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ParaView: [Welcome | Site Map]

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Wiki Sandbox

Paraview Ranking test

Developers Corner

Mailing List

The developers mailing list is here: http://public.kitware.com/mailman/subscribe/paraview-developers This should be used for questions about modifying the Paraview code, not using Paraview.

Pitfalls

• When writing a VTK filter for use with Paraview, any variable declarations involving vtkSmartPointer in the filter's header file must be wrapped in BTX ETX tags to tell the parser to ignore these lines. As an example:

<source lang="cpp"> private: //BTX vtkSmartPointer<vtkPolyData> Source; vtkSmartPointer<vtkPolyData> Target; vtkSmartPointer<vtkIterativeClosestPointTransform> ICPTransform; //ETX </source>

If these tags are not added, when building the plugin you will get an error: <source lang="text">

• • • SYNTAX ERROR found in parsing the header file vtkICPFilter.h before line 34 ***

</source>

• TypeRevisionMacro

If you get an error like: <source lang="text"> vtkICPFilterClientServer.cxx:97: error: invalid conversion from ‘vtkYourFiltersSuperClass*’ to ‘vtkYourFilter*’ </source>

For example: <source lang="text"> vtkICPFilterClientServer.cxx:97: error: invalid conversion from ‘vtkPolyDataAlgorithm*’ to ‘vtkICPFilter*’ </source>

You need to add this: <source lang="cpp"> vtkTypeRevisionMacro(vtkYourFilter,vtkYourFiltersSuperClass); </source> In this example: <source lang="cpp"> vtkTypeRevisionMacro(vtkICPFilter,vtkPolyDataAlgorithm); </source>

to the public: section of vtkYourFilter.h.