# Pre-loading Steps

**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/pre-loading-steps/9309
**Category:** ParaView Support
**Tags:** vtk
**Created:** [March 30, 2022, 12:52am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/pre-loading-steps/9309 "2022-03-30T00:52:27Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 3

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### Author: ![Kenneth\_Moreland](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/kenneth_moreland/32/15033_2.png) [@Kenneth\_Moreland](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Kenneth_Moreland)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2022, 12:26pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/pre-loading-steps/9309/3 "2022-03-30T12:26:16Z")

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Like @mwestphal says, ParaView has a built in cache for the animation, but to enable it you first have to go to settings and turn on the `Cache Geometry For Animation` feature. To be clear, you first have to hit play ![image](https://discourse.paraview.org/uploads/default/original/2X/3/3468911888b4af076746f00955730d91b6944efd.png) and let ParaView cycle through each of the time steps. As it visits each time step, ParaView will cache the rendered geometry of your data. After ParaView goes through that once, you can then switch between time steps without having to reload the data.

One word of warning, the animation cache does not actually save the data that you are loading from the file directly. Rather, it is saving the geometry at the end of the pipeline that is being rendered. That means if you make a change to your visualization, such as adding a filter, the cache will get cleared and ParaView will load the data from file all over again. So, in your case I would recommend the other option @mwestphal suggested, the `Temporal Cache` filter.

After you open your data in ParaView, add the `Temporal Cache` filter to the reader. Set the `Cache Size` to the number of time steps you have (in your case, 4). Once again, you have to hit play ![image](https://discourse.paraview.org/uploads/default/original/2X/3/3468911888b4af076746f00955730d91b6944efd.png) or otherwise let ParaView visit each time step. But once you do so, ParaView will hold the data for the time step in memory.

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