# Is it possible to have XML format to share points and cells?

**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/is-it-possible-to-have-xml-format-to-share-points-and-cells/9700
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [May 27, 2022, 5:08pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/is-it-possible-to-have-xml-format-to-share-points-and-cells/9700 "2022-05-27T17:08:04Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Cam](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/cam/32/8343_2.png) [@Cam](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Cam)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2022, 5:08pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/is-it-possible-to-have-xml-format-to-share-points-and-cells/9700/1 "2022-05-27T17:08:05Z")

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Say I have 3 .vtu files which can be put into one .pvd file.

```auto
<VTKFile type="Collection" version="1.0" byte_order="LittleEndian" header_type="UInt64">
  <Collection>
    <DataSet timestep="0" part="0" file="a/a_0_0.vtu"/>
    <DataSet timestep="0.000100074" part="0" file="a/a_0_1.vtu"/>
    <DataSet timestep="0.000199905" part="0" file="a/a_0_2.vtu"/>
  </Collection>
</VTKFile>

```

The thing is that all of the .vtu have the same points and cells. I was wondering if there is a pattern which allows us to write the points and cells data only once and each .vtu file only contains the pointdata and celldata.

Thanks,  
Cam

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### Author: ![Kenichiro-Yoshimi](https://discourse.paraview.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/ecc23a/32.png) [@Kenichiro-Yoshimi](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Kenichiro-Yoshimi)
#### Post date: [May 30, 2022, 10:04pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/is-it-possible-to-have-xml-format-to-share-points-and-cells/9700/2 "2022-05-30T22:04:51Z")

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The vtu format does not support changing only the data without changing the geometry. In such cases, one option would be to use another format such as xdmf or EnSight format.

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![mwestphal](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/mwestphal/32/17_2.png) [@mwestphal](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/mwestphal)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2022, 9:36am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/is-it-possible-to-have-xml-format-to-share-points-and-cells/9700/3 "2022-06-01T09:36:22Z")

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FYI @Francois_Mazen

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![hakostra](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/hakostra/32/5905_2.png) [@hakostra](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/hakostra)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2022, 7:01am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/is-it-possible-to-have-xml-format-to-share-points-and-cells/9700/4 "2022-06-08T07:01:08Z")

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This would have been an extremely nice feature for CFD simulations on stationary grids…