Visualizing Simulation Bounding Box

ParaView Support
1

Hi,

I’m sometimes using Paraview to visualize simpleascii structured gird vtk files for particle data.
Example:

# vtk DataFile Version 2.0
Timestep
ASCII
DATASET STRUCTURED_GRID
DIMENSIONS 1 1 1
POINTS 4 double
0.4 0.2 0.2
0.6 0.2 0.2
0.2 0.6 0.2
0.6 0.6 0.2

My question now is: How can I draw the bounding box of the domain in Paraview?
As far as I understand the “DIMENSIONS” line represents this Information.
The nearest thing I know so far is activating “Data Axes Grid” but in this case, this would not draw a box around the whole domain but only around the farthest out particles.

Help appreciated :slight_smile:

2

For a simple box, use the Outline filter.

3

The Outline Filter (at least for me) gives me the same box as “(Data) Axes Grid” but obviously without numbers.

Probably I didn’t clearly specify what I want:
My Domain is a box with edge lenghs 1,1,1 (See DIMENSIONS in the esample vtk file.). Therefore I would like Paraview to draw a box with a lower corner at (0,0,0) and an upper at (1,1,1).
Outline / Data Axes Grid / Axes Grid all give me (for the given Example) a Box from (0.2, 0.2, 0.2) to (0.6, 0.6, 0.2) because these are the outermost particle coordinates.

I also use a glyph filter to visualize the points if this is of any relevance.

4

easiest option would be plop another source in with the required bounds. e.g. create a Box source with center as (0.5, 0.5,0.5) and the X,Y,Z lengths as 1. Change it’s representation to Outline. Now Data Axes Grid for the box or Axes Grid for the whole scene should be closer to what you want.

5

create a Box

Yes, this actually fits pretty exactly what I want thanks :slight_smile:

However, this forces me to manually enter dimensions and center of the box. Is there no way to use the information from the datafile? Or can this Information be passed through the datafile with other keywords?

6

The domain information is actually not in the data file at all. The only geometry information the data file has are the points and the points are indeed in the range that doesn’t cover the full domain.

7

Whats then the point of the DIMENSIONS line?

Is there a way to store the information about the geometry of the domain in the file (and use it in Paraview?).

8

dimensions are the structured grid dimensions. It’s telling how many samples you have along i, j, and k directions.