ParaView User's Guide
9
1.4.6 Add a bounding box
In this step we are going to add a filter to the pipeline. Select the Outline item from the
Filter menu on the Menu Bar. After you do this you will
see the Outline property sheet appear in the Left Panel.
As with sources, you need to click the Accept button to
actually add this filter to the pipeline. Once you do this
you will see an outline box surrounding the sphere. You
will also notice that in there are now two items listed in the
Selection Window: Sphere1 and Outline0. Both items are
visible so an open eye is shown to the left of each.
Because the Outline0 object is the active data object, it is
highlighted in yellow, and if another filter is added it will be
connected to this data object.
Use the Display tab for Outline0 to change the color of the line by clicking on the Actor
Color button in the Color region. You can also change the thickness of the line using the
Line Width thumb wheel that can be accessed by clicking on the small triangle to the
right of the text entry box, or by typing a number directly in the box.
To access the properties of the Sphere1 object you can either click on Sphere1 in the
Selection Window, or select this item from the Select menu on the Menu Bar. This will
cause Sphere1 to be the currently active object, and the Sphere1 property sheet will be
displayed. Using the Display tab change the sphere back to a surface representation.
The image you have now should appear something like the one shown above.
1.4.7 Shrink the sphere
We will now apply another filter to the sphere. First, make sure that Sphere1 is the
highlighted item in the Selection Window so that the filter we add will be connected to it.
Now select the Shrink filter from the Filter menu. On the property sheet, change the
Shrink Factor to 0.75 (the default is 0.5) and press Accept. You will notice that several
things happen. First, a new item is added to the selection window called Shrink0 and it
is now the currently selected item. In the Display Area it appears that the polygons
defining the sphere have each been shrunk to 75% of their original size. Actually, the
original sphere (with full size polygons) is still there, it is just not visible now. Note that
the eye icon next to Sphere1 in the Selection Window is now light grey indicating that
this item is invisible. When the shrink filter was added, a new data object was created
based on the input data object (the sphere). This new object (the output of the shrink
filter) is now visible and the original input is not visible.
Most filters do turn off the visibility of the input data object when they execute. Two
exceptions to this are the outline filters (Outline and Outline Corners) since it is
assumed with these filters that the user wants to see both the original data and the filter
output simultaneously.
In this example you have created a branching pipeline in ParaView. You can see this in
the Navigation Window. To change from Selection Window to Navigation Window, click