FieldData

Description¶

Three types of data can be stored in a vtkPolyData object - PointData, CellData, and FieldData. For PointData, there must be a piece of data associated with each point (e.g. a temperature data array with the temperature at each point). For CellData, there must be a piece of data associated with each cell (e.g. the area of each triangle). For data that does not align with either points or cells, FieldData should be used. This is typically data that describes the dataset as a whole. An example could be the name of the dataset, or the center of mass of the points, etc.

This demo adds general data to a polydata (not at each point or cell). In this example, the center of mass of the data is stored.

Code¶

FieldData.cxx

#include <vtkSmartPointer.h>
#include <vtkCellData.h>
#include <vtkMath.h>
#include <vtkDoubleArray.h>
#include <vtkPoints.h>
#include <vtkPolyData.h>
#include <vtkPointData.h>
#include <vtkXMLPolyDataReader.h>
#include <vtkFieldData.h>
#include <vtkSphereSource.h>

int main(int, char *[])
{
  vtkSmartPointer<vtkSphereSource> source = 
    vtkSmartPointer<vtkSphereSource>::New();
  source->Update();

  // Extract the polydata
  vtkSmartPointer<vtkPolyData> polydata = 
    vtkSmartPointer<vtkPolyData>::New();
  polydata->ShallowCopy(source->GetOutput());

  vtkSmartPointer<vtkDoubleArray> location = 
    vtkSmartPointer<vtkDoubleArray>::New();

  // Create the data to store (here we just use (0,0,0))
  double locationValue[3] = {0,0,0};

  location->SetNumberOfComponents(3);
  location->SetName("MyDoubleArray");
  location->InsertNextTuple(locationValue);
  // The data is added to FIELD data (rather than POINT data as usual)
  polydata->GetFieldData()->AddArray(location);

  vtkSmartPointer<vtkIntArray> intValue =
    vtkSmartPointer<vtkIntArray>::New();
  intValue->SetNumberOfComponents(1);
  intValue->SetName("MyIntValue");
  intValue->InsertNextValue(5);

  polydata->GetFieldData()->AddArray(intValue);

  // Get the data back out
  vtkIntArray* retrievedArray = vtkIntArray::SafeDownCast(polydata->GetFieldData()->GetAbstractArray("MyIntValue"));

  std::cout << retrievedArray->GetValue(0) << std::endl;

  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

CMakeLists.txt¶

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.3 FATAL_ERROR)

project(FieldData)

find_package(VTK COMPONENTS 
  vtkCommonCore
  vtkCommonDataModel
  vtkFiltersSources
  vtkIOXML QUIET)
if (NOT VTK_FOUND)
  message("Skipping FieldData: ${VTK_NOT_FOUND_MESSAGE}")
  return ()
endif()
message (STATUS "VTK_VERSION: ${VTK_VERSION}")
if (VTK_VERSION VERSION_LESS "8.90.0")
  # old system
  include(${VTK_USE_FILE})
  add_executable(FieldData MACOSX_BUNDLE FieldData.cxx )
  target_link_libraries(FieldData PRIVATE ${VTK_LIBRARIES})
else ()
  # include all components
  add_executable(FieldData MACOSX_BUNDLE FieldData.cxx )
  target_link_libraries(FieldData PRIVATE ${VTK_LIBRARIES})
  # vtk_module_autoinit is needed
  vtk_module_autoinit(
    TARGETS FieldData
    MODULES ${VTK_LIBRARIES}
    )
endif ()

Download and Build FieldData¶

Click here to download FieldData and its CMakeLists.txt file. Once the tarball FieldData.tar has been downloaded and extracted,

cd FieldData/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:

./FieldData

WINDOWS USERS

Be sure to add the VTK bin directory to your path. This will resolve the VTK dll's at run time.