Build plugin that already exists with different SM xml

ParaView Support
1

I’m trying to build paraview plugin Temporal Interpolator outside paraview source because i want to its property DiscreteTimeStepInterval to be displayed in a dropdown list instead of a double input, which is possible, right?.
Since this filter already exists in paraview, I have the source .h|.cxx files and altered ServerManager xml, however, I’m puzzled over the Module file. I’m not sure which module it depends on and so I simiply copied an example and CMake reported errors:
CMake Error at E:/ParaView-Build/lib/cmake/paraview-5.7/ParaViewPlugin.cmake:532 (message):
Unparsed arguments for paraview_add_plugin:
MODULE;TemporalInterpolator::TemporalaInterpolator
How should I fix this, or is there any convenient way to do this?

Thanks for any advice.

Yoshino.

2

is there any convenient way to do this?

Yes, XML plugins. ParaView: Plugin Howto : XML plugins part.

You will not need to build anything, just rewrite the XML of the filter as you see fit.

3

Thanks! It works and I’m able to choose the new filter in the alphabetical filter menu.

However, as I mentioned above, a drop down list is what I want, and I changed the XML property to <EnumerationDomain with several Entry as Plugin_HowTo#Drop down list describes. As a result, the property DiscreteTimeStepValue was displayed without a dropdown list, nor even any input, just like this:
image
Is the GUI parameter EnumerationDomain deprecated or it won’t work in this case?

4

Can you share the xml you are using ?

5

Here is my XML, I copy this from the filters.xml from paraview source and made little modification.
MultiTimeResolution.xml (2.7 KB)

6

The DoubleVectorProperty does not support enumeration domain sadly.
I’m afraid you need to create a class inheriting vtkTemporalInterpolator with its own int interface, then you could be able to control it from an IntVectorProperty.

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7

https://gitlab.kitware.com/paraview/paraview/-/issues/19977

8

But it will lose its meaning if set to int type, it has to be double(0.0~1.0) for interpolation. Do you think it possible for me to create a custom property widget(e.g. Exclusive QGroupBox), which has almost identical function, to show this property? Or the DoubleVectorProperty is just incompatible with any enum type widgets?

9

I think I found the solution. The property DiscreteTimeStepValue could be used to both aggregate(when set >1) and interpolate(when set between 0~1) dataset timesteps, while the latter function could be replaced by another proeprty ResampleFactor, which was not exposed in SM XML. A issue was raised: https://gitlab.kitware.com/paraview/paraview/-/issues/19979.

In my case, I add the property ResampleFactor in sm xml and it works. So I guess there is no need to set DiscreteTimeStepValue to double type, an integar value is all we need plus ResampleFactor. Is it ok for me if I manually change the type of DiscreteTimeStepValue to int from the source?

10

Well, you can, but it means you are building a patched ParaView.

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11

The amazing thing is that I made it work not by rewriting the source but changing the xml property from DoubleVectorProperty to IntVectorProiperty and then the EnumerationDomain works. Here it is:
image
You can see all the enum were listed and ResampleFactor was shown. I hope this is a side-effect other than a potential bug.

12

but the values are not correct, are they ?

13

For the double values, which are not needed, they are not, and I’ll remove them. But for the integar values, yes they are, at least I didn’t see any weird result yet. How do you think? :sweat_smile:

14

Of course, it should work with integer values.

1 Like
15

Then I have to build this plugin, right?

16

Yes.

If building is not an option for you, a similar result could be obtained with a PythonAlgorithmPlugin.

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