vtkTecplotReader

Section: Visualization Toolkit IO Classes

Usage

vtkTecplotReader parses an ASCII Tecplot file to get a vtkMultiBlockDataSet object made up of several vtkDataSet objects, of which each is of type either vtkStructuredGrid or vtkUnstructuredGrid. Each vtkDataSet object maintains the geometry, topology, and some associated attributes describing physical properties.

Tecplot treats 3D coordinates (only one or two coordinates might be explicitly specified in a file) as varaibles too, whose names (e.g., 'X' / 'x' / 'I', 'Y' / 'y' / 'J', 'Z' / 'z' / 'K') are provided in the variables list (the 'VARIABLES' section). These names are then followed in the list by those of other traditional variables or attributes (node- based and / or cell-based data with the mode specified via token 'VAR LOCATION', to be extracted to create vtkPointData and / or vtkCellData). Each zone described afterwards (in the 'ZONE's section) provides the specific values of the aforementioned variables (including 3D coordinates), in the same order as indicated by the variable-names list, through either POINT-packing (i.e., tuple-based storage) or BLOCK-packing (component-based storage). In particular, the first / description line of each zone tells the type of all the constituent cells as the connectivity / topology information. In other words, the entire dataset is made up of multiple zones (blocks), of which each maintains a set of cells of the same type ('BRICK', 'TRIANGLE', 'QUADRILATERAL', 'TETRAHEDRON', and 'POINT' in Tecplot terms). In addition, the description line of each zone specifies the zone name, dimensionality information (size of each dimension for a structured zone), number of nodes, and number of cells. Information about the file format is available at http://download.tecplot.com/360/dataformat.pdf.

To create an instance of class vtkTecplotReader, simply invoke its constructor as follows

  obj = vtkTecplotReader

Methods

The class vtkTecplotReader has several methods that can be used. They are listed below. Note that the documentation is translated automatically from the VTK sources, and may not be completely intelligible. When in doubt, consult the VTK website. In the methods listed below, obj is an instance of the vtkTecplotReader class.