# Artist needs help Isolating or assigning color to grains
**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/artist-needs-help-isolating-or-assigning-color-to-grains/2421
**Category:** ParaView Support
**Created:** [August 13, 2019, 6:53pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/artist-needs-help-isolating-or-assigning-color-to-grains/2421 "2019-08-13T18:53:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Jenna\_Frye](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Jenna_Frye)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2019, 6:53pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/artist-needs-help-isolating-or-assigning-color-to-grains/2421/1 "2019-08-13T18:53:26Z")
Hello!
I am an artist (have mercy!) designing a puzzle based on 3d grain boundary data. I’m using paraview to be able to view the xdmf file I created in Dream3d and I’m mostly getting the hang of that. My question is:
- is it possible to isolate the grains based on their ipf color profile so that i could see all the orange, all the blue etc.
- is it possible to assign a surface color to individual grains that i’ve brought in as stl files? Not for printing obviously, but just to help visualize the structure as I print and assemble it?
Thanks to anyone with any insight and apologies in advance if I’m not using the proper terminology.
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### Author:  [@Kenneth\_Moreland](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Kenneth_Moreland)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2019, 7:46pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/artist-needs-help-isolating-or-assigning-color-to-grains/2421/2 "2019-08-13T19:46:33Z")
It’s interesting to see ParaView used for applications a bit outside of what it was envisioned for. I’m not familiar with grain boundary data, so my answers my be guessing a little bit, but here goes.
For your first question, the `Threshold` filter  will probably be able to isolate things based on their ipf value (whatever that is). Google seems to suggest that ipf is some sort of vector. In that case you will first need to go to `Edit` -\> `Settings` (or `ParaView` -\> `Preferences` on Mac) and turn on the `Auto Convert Properties` option. That will let you threshold each of the components of ipf independently. (You will have to add a chained `Threshold` for each component you want to narrow.)
For your second question, try running the `Connectivity` filter. That should assign a different number to each individual gain assuming that the independent grains are not touching.
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### Author:  [@Jenna\_Frye](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Jenna_Frye)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2019, 9:16pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/artist-needs-help-isolating-or-assigning-color-to-grains/2421/3 "2019-08-13T21:16:57Z")
Thank you! I’ll see if I can use the threshold and connectivity filter to make it do my bidding. For visual reference, here is the image of the data``
i’m essentially trying to recolor those grains and then be able to pull up all the grains of each color independently so i can organize them for printing. Thanks for reaching out. I appreciate the help!