Introduction to ParaView

Different graphical representations of the 3D viewer:

Common built-in filters in ParaView:

Calculator filter:

Writing formulas or equations based on available scalar, vector, or tensor variables to calculate new quantities.
Easy syntax to follow
Developed based on intuitive common vector and scalar algebra formulation
Attribute Type: Point data or Cell data
Point data: values are attributed to points (imagine it as a table, where each point (x, y, z) has a value from that table)
Cell data: values are attributed to cells (imagine it as table, where each (tiny cube, triangle, tetrahedral, etc.) has a value from that table)
Note: point data and cell data could be converted to each other easily (we'll see it later!)
Result Array Name: Name of your new quantity or variable (choose whatever you want!)
iHat, jHat, kHat: unit vectors along the x, y, and z directions respectively in the Cartesian coordinate
v1.v2: vector v1 dot product to vector v2
mag: magnitude of a vector
Other functions are common mathematical functions such as sqrt, floor, exp, log10, etc.

Extract iso-surfaces (means in that surface all the points have a unique value based on chosen Contour By variable, phi = phi0)
Single value for the variable or a range of values to compute contours
Triangulate the extracted iso-surfaces -----------> Generate Triangles
Compute normal vector of iso-surfaces --------------> Compute Normals
Compute gradient of the values -------------> Compute Gradients

This filter clips the dataset into two parts.
Clip Type: The function that is used to clip the dataset such as using a Plane, Box, Sphere, or a Cylinder
Function Parameters: The parameters that define the clipping function. For example for Plane it needs Origin and Normal vector
Invert: It inverts the clipping functionality!

Similar to Clip filter, it has slicing function that could be a Plane, Box, Sphere, or Cylinder.
The key different with Clip filter: Slice filter just cut a 2D slice from the dataset

Threshold filter masks a portion of the dataset based on a value range for a given variable. For example you can mask the dataset based on color variable in the range of 100 to 200 values.
It takes minimum and maximum of the range for the given variable to mask and produce an unstructured dataset after execution.

Points are ordinary Cartesian points defined by their x, y, and z.
Cells are different mesh that includes points and connectivity between those points or vertices.
We have different cell types in ParaView:

Some of the mentioned filters here only works with either point data or cell data types. For example, Contour filter only works with point data. If the dataset is in the cell data format, it must be converted to point data before usage.

Transform filter applied linear transformations on the dataset such as moving, rotating, and scaling.
Translating or moving: Give translation vector in x, y, and z directions.
Rotation: Give Rotation vector along x, y, and z axes.
Scaling: Give scaling factors along x, y, and z directions.

In order to combine some of the filters together and have a rendering that shows combination of them, sometimes we need to change the opacity of some of the objects to complex rendering mode.
Opacity range is from 0 to 1. Zero (0) belongs to fully transparent and one (1) belongs to fully opaque rendering modes.
Here we combined Clip and Contour filters by changing the opacity of clipped object.

It's possible to have multiple data viewes by adding some split in the horizontal or vertical directions:

It's possible to plot the datasets over a user defined line by specifying the start and end points by using Plot Over Line filter:

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