Exodus reader does not deal with attributes, but needs to.
This issue was created automatically from an original Mantis Issue. Further discussion may take place here.
The Exodus reader needs to fully implement attributes. It is half way there, but seems to never have been finished. Attributes are variables that are specific to a block, with no time data. They are basically per cell or point input data to the upstream physics packages that is then passed through. An example would be the thickness of the sheet metal on the blocks representing the skin of a car. As with this example, the engine would not have attributes (the engine has no thickness), but could have other attributes (percent aluminum, or some stress tensor, etc).
ParaView needs to deal with the case where these blocks are split across multiple files, and for files that don't include any cells for a block, there is no attribute data. I have seen cases where the number of attributes is different (but not zero) between blocks.
Please just create a union of all attributes. For blocks that don't have an attribute (for instance an engine and skin thickness), please fill with NaN.
This has already been implemented in EnSight numerous years ago, and is an issue with these people moving to ParaView. See attached screenshot from EnSight. In the attached picture, red is attributes, blue is the underlying color.