Using Paraview to plot selection over time

Paraview is a nice visualization software and it is equiped with a lot of tools to analyze the data. In my current project I have a time sequence data which is stored in different VTK legacy files. The files are stored in this convention Etot.00010.vtk, Etot.00020.vtk, where the numbers are the time steps. To load the data do the following:

  1. Open paraview.
  2. Click “File->Open”
  3. Go the folder where the data files are located, you will see Etot…vtk, with a plus sign on the left. If you click the plus sign you will be able to select a particular time step data. But since we want to load all, click the upper most line, i.e. Etot…vtk.
  4. Click “Apply”.
  5. To view  cut plane, click the icon “Slice”, and click Apply.

Now, for example we are interested to plot the data over time from a particular point. To do this:

  1. Click the button “Select points on”, i.e. button with triangle and three red dots.
  2. And then choose menu “Filter->Data Analysis->Plot selection over time”. This will take some time depending on how many time steps you have. Once done. You will see another 2D plot view open up.

5 Responses

  1. If I have for example a cavity and I would like to plot the velocity over time, not only for a particular point as you mentioned before, but for the whole cavity what would you recommend me to do?
    Thanks in advance!

    • More specifically, I want to plot the Kinetic energy (u^2 / 2) over time. Therefore, I decided to choose Filter->intergrate variables and then PlotSelection over time. Is It correct?

    • Hi lefteris, that would be massive for 2D plot. In the post above, I was trying to plot in 2D x-y plot, where the y axis is the quantity, and the x is time. If you have more than on points, I guess the best is to “animate”.

      • As I can understand, you mean that I have to choose Filter->PlotOverLine and click the ¨play¨ button, don`t you?
        I suppose that an alternative way is to take the average (ux^2 +uy^2+uz^2)/ 2 for each time step and plot the results in Origin or in Excel. But this is a time-consuming way.
        When I am trying to select the whole region of the cavity paraview is stuck, because as you said it is quiet massive.
        Thanks for your reply!

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