# Find Data - Large Cell ID Selection

**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/find-data-large-cell-id-selection/6193
**Category:** ParaView Support
**Created:** [January 10, 2021, 1:15am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/find-data-large-cell-id-selection/6193 "2021-01-10T01:15:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![yamartinezgomez](https://discourse.paraview.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/e5b9ba/32.png) [@yamartinezgomez](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/yamartinezgomez)
#### Post date: [January 10, 2021, 1:15am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/find-data-large-cell-id-selection/6193/1 "2021-01-10T01:15:00Z")

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Hello,

I currently have a \*.vtk file that is approximately 3 million cells.  
I have specific Cell ID’s that I would like to highlight/view.

For this, I open ParaView, load my object (vtk file).  
I go to Edit -\> Find Data.  
My goal is to find Cell(s) in the the \*.vtk file.  
I select ID is one of … (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, …, 100,000)

The problem is that I am not able to add ALL the Cell IDs I want to see. ParaView has a limit of numbers (followed by commas) that it can take.  
Is there a way in which I can supply a large list of numbers that I have already identified?

Thank you!

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### Author: ![Joachim\_P](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/joachim_p/32/9596_2.png) [@Joachim\_P](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Joachim_P)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2021, 7:55am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/find-data-large-cell-id-selection/6193/2 "2021-01-11T07:55:23Z")

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Yvon,  
Can’t you instead use one (or a set of) ranges? Like select alls cells if IDS \<= 100 000?  
J.

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### Author: ![yamartinezgomez](https://discourse.paraview.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/e5b9ba/32.png) [@yamartinezgomez](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/yamartinezgomez)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2021, 3:53am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/find-data-large-cell-id-selection/6193/3 "2021-01-12T03:53:11Z")

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That wouldn’t work for me as the Cell IDs I have are NOT continuous.  
Would there be another approach?

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### Author: ![Joachim\_P](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/joachim_p/32/9596_2.png) [@Joachim\_P](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Joachim_P)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2021, 2:48am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/find-data-large-cell-id-selection/6193/4 "2021-01-13T02:48:07Z")

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Then what about using a Python script to perform the selection?

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![yamartinezgomez](https://discourse.paraview.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/e5b9ba/32.png) [@yamartinezgomez](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/yamartinezgomez)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2021, 2:52am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/find-data-large-cell-id-selection/6193/5 "2021-01-13T02:52:17Z")

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Yeah! Could you guide me into how this selection can be performed using Python?  
I already wrote a python script that would gather all the Cell IDs I need so I can paste them into ParaView. However, I ran into that limitation I mentioned in this topic.

My end goal is to view this large random group of Cell IDs in ParaView.

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![Joachim\_P](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/joachim_p/32/9596_2.png) [@Joachim\_P](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Joachim_P)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2021, 3:03am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/find-data-large-cell-id-selection/6193/6 "2021-01-13T03:03:46Z")

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You can proceed by creating an array made of pairs (process id, cell id) and then use the `SelectIDs()` function of ParaView to perform the selection.  
Example to select cells 1, 20 and 34:

```auto
   my_ids = [0,1, 0,20, 0,34]
   SelectIDs(my_ids, 'CELL')

```

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![yamartinezgomez](https://discourse.paraview.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/e5b9ba/32.png) [@yamartinezgomez](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/yamartinezgomez)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2021, 3:08am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/find-data-large-cell-id-selection/6193/7 "2021-01-13T03:08:17Z")

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Ok!  
Two questions regarding your answer:

1. What do you mean by process ID? In your example, what would the zeros represent?
2. How can I implement the function in ParaView?

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### Author: ![Joachim\_P](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/joachim_p/32/9596_2.png) [@Joachim\_P](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Joachim_P)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2021, 7:54am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/find-data-large-cell-id-selection/6193/8 "2021-01-16T07:54:30Z")

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1. If you don’t know what processor ID is, I think you are not using ParaView in client/server mode connected to a distributed server, so put 0 everywhere.
2. Use the Python Shell (menu View/Python Shell) to type your cell selection script.

HTH
