# Opening a time series with multiple files per time-points.

**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/opening-a-time-series-with-multiple-files-per-time-points/12039
**Category:** ParaView Support
**Created:** [May 7, 2023, 10:08pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/opening-a-time-series-with-multiple-files-per-time-points/12039 "2023-05-07T22:08:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![tinevez](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/tinevez/32/11535_2.png) [@tinevez](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/tinevez)
#### Post date: [May 7, 2023, 10:08pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/opening-a-time-series-with-multiple-files-per-time-points/12039/1 "2023-05-07T22:08:01Z")

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Hello all,

I have several objects stored as meshes in a PLY files. The multiple PLY files corresponds each to one object followed over several time-points.

In the docs I found out how to open a group of files as a time-series, by naming the files _e.g._`foo01.ply`, `foo02.ply`, etc

I would like to “tell” paraview that I have **several files per time-point**. For instance  
`objA-t01.ply`  
`objA-t02.ply`  
`objA-t03.ply`  
`objB-t01.ply`  
`objB-t02.ply`

and of course I wish the objects A and B to be present simultaneously at each time-point they are in.

Is there a way to achieve this in paraview? Maybe a meta file that would specify how to open the data? Or another file format?

Thanks

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### 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: [May 9, 2023, 9:43am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/opening-a-time-series-with-multiple-files-per-time-points/12039/2 "2023-05-09T09:43:11Z")

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I’m afraid you wont be able to combine .ply automatically like that. You can do that manually in ParaView using GroupDataSets though.