# glyph vs. streamline concept within paraview
**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glyph-vs-streamline-concept-within-paraview/3320
**Category:** ParaView Support
**Created:** [January 12, 2020, 5:07pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glyph-vs-streamline-concept-within-paraview/3320 "2020-01-12T17:07:12Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@msjuhasznora](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/msjuhasznora)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2020, 5:07pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glyph-vs-streamline-concept-within-paraview/3320/1 "2020-01-12T17:07:12Z")
Hi,
Forgive me if my question sounds silly but I would like to understand something well.
I have a 2D velocity field and I want to show better what happens exactly in the flow by using Paraview. Applying the “Glyph” filter and scaling it with respect to “vector” looks really good, but I can’t seem to find anywhere an official confirmation what mathematical quantity exactly “glyphs” represent. In some sense the idea they give is similar to the concept of streamlines, but that is a different filter as I understand. The “glyph arrows” simply represent the 2D velocity vectors in each point?
Thank you so much!
Nora
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### Author:  [@nicolas.vuaille](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/nicolas.vuaille)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2020, 10:06am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/glyph-vs-streamline-concept-within-paraview/3320/2 "2020-01-13T10:06:12Z")
**Glyphs**
It is a _rendering feature_.
This is a geometry displayed one some points of the dataset. This geometry can be anything (see Glyph with custom source) and can be modified (oriented and scaled) following the data at the corresponding point. So indeed, you can have at each point an arrow oriented as your vector, with a norm proportional to your vector.
**StreamLines**
It is a _mathematical construction_.
This is a set of continuous lines that goes through the data set, following the vector field.
Because of the mathematical interpolation, this more costly than the glyphs