Cell values partly disappear when editing width on Mac

Hi all,

I’ve noticed the following problem occurs on quite a few versions of ParaView on Mac (mine and that of colleagues). I currently run the latest version 5.11.0.

All the data shows well for the cell when the line width is set to 1:

But some cells disappear when the line width is set to a value greater than 1:

My data file is a .vtk with nodes and cells (1D line elements connecting 2 nodes).
data_pv_question.vtk (1.3 KB)

Does anyone have a similar issue or knows what might be causing it?

How to reproduce:

  1. Install version 5.11.0 of ParaView on a Mac
  2. Open the data_pv_question.vtk file in ParaView
  3. Display the pipe_id in the viewer
  4. Make sure you are displaying the data as surface
  5. Edit the line width under the styling options of advanced properties accessible via the cog icon in the properties window.

Screenshot showing the line width setting under the styling options

It is fine in Windows. It is also fine when I display node data.

Thanks

Hi JMC. Welcome to the ParaView community!

Hmmm … I have never seen that. Could you post a dataset, and give very detailed directions on how to replicate? For instance, you are log scaled, and have changed color maps. I assume you are displaying using wireframe?

Thank you for the welcome :slight_smile: !

I’ve edited my question so you can play with a simpler file.

As you can see - without any changes to the colormap or scale settings the issue is still apparent.

I’m not displaying in wireframe but in surface. My cell data just happens to be a 1D line.

Yep, ParaView bug. Thanks.

Written up here: https://gitlab.kitware.com/paraview/paraview/-/issues/21832

No problem. Thanks for looking into it. Is there a workaround I could use at the moment that you could recommend? The best I’ve found so far is to use the Cell to Point filter and then increase the line width.

I don’t know of a workaround. What you are doing sounds about as good as anything else…

Good afternoon,
did you find any solution? As experience the same problem but the point is I really need to render data urgently… And lines of width 1 can hardly be seen…
Thanks a lot in advance
Regards

Hi Alexandra,

If it is suitable for your data try using the “Cell Data to Point Data” filter. The you should be able to get the Line Width to work. As an alternative, and if your data has no NaNs then the bug is not present on Windows, so you should be able to do your render on Windows. I use the “Cell Data to Point Data” method when I need to record a video or make a figure.

I hope that helps.

Hi

The point is my data are vtk files containing combos of edges, triangles, tets + scalars to handle colors of each cell (I have between 4 and 10 colors on the overall).
And I really need to keep cells as they are (I’m working on topological issues). So do you think this solution could work?

Thanks a lot and best regards

Hi,

Yes I think it would work.

I opened one of my files with a mix of edges and triangles and this is what I get when I’m viewing the data with wireframe and a custom Line Width after applying the filter:

As you can see it works even for the triangles. The only thing to be aware of is that the filter uses some form of averaging to transfer the cell values to the nodes, so some sharp transitions might be smoothed out by the process… but it is still better than the bugged alternative:

I hope that works for you too! (note it will also work for suface instead of wireframe.)

Hi again

Thanks a lot, I gonna try.
Do you have any idea why we have this bug on Macs? As everything is ok under linux (but the only desktop I can use have hardly a GPU and the renders are just awful :frowning: )

Regards

I have no idea I’m afraid. I’ve got fairly limited datasets myself so render time isn’t much of an issue, but I have to contend with this line bug on Mac or Windows not rendering NaNs (which I have a lot of) properly. Maybe I should try Linux.

Anyway, your datasets look large so I hope you get the output you’re after with this filter.

Best

Actually I have both large and small data sets… For all of them I experience the same problem: impossible to widen the lines without losing their Color (and indeed getting random colors).
Under linux it seems the problem does not exist (but I have not « correct » linux computer……. Only poor virtual machines… )

Regards

That’s good then. You could try the Cell Data to Point Filter on a small dataset and post back here with whether or not it has worked for your data for the next person who runs into this problem.

I also tend to download the new ParaView regularly so I’ll post here if the bug gets fixed in a later release.