Point Data¶

The pyvista.PolyData object adds additional functionality to the vtk.vtkPolyData object, to include direct array access through NumPy, one line plotting, and other mesh functions.

PolyData Creation¶

See Create PolyData for an example on creating a pyvista.PolyData object from NumPy arrays.

Empty Object¶

A polydata object can be initialized with:

import pyvista
grid = pyvista.PolyData()

This creates an empty grid, and is not useful until points and cells are added to it. VTK points and cells can be added with SetPoints and SetCells, but the inputs to these need to be vtk.vtkCellArray and vtk.vtkPoints objects, which need to be populated with values. Grid creation is simplified by initializing the grid directly from NumPy arrays as in the following section.

Initialize from a File¶

Both binary and ASCII .ply, .stl, and .vtk files can be read using PyVista. For example, the PyVista package contains example meshes and these can be loaded with:

import pyvista
from pyvista import examples

# Load mesh
mesh = pyvista.PolyData(examples.planefile)

This mesh can then be written to a vtk file using:

mesh.save('plane.vtk')

These meshes are identical.

import numpy as np

mesh_from_vtk = pyvista.PolyData('plane.vtk')
print(np.allclose(mesh_from_vtk.points, mesh.points))

Mesh Manipulation and Plotting¶

Meshes can be directly manipulated using NumPy or with the built-in translation and rotation routines. This example loads two meshes and moves, scales, and copies them.

import pyvista
from pyvista import examples

# load and shrink airplane
airplane = pyvista.PolyData(examples.planefile)
airplane.points /= 10 # shrink by 10x

# rotate and translate ant so it is on the plane
ant = pyvista.PolyData(examples.antfile)
ant.rotate_x(90)
ant.translate([90, 60, 15])

# Make a copy and add another ant
ant_copy = ant.copy()
ant_copy.translate([30, 0, -10])

To plot more than one mesh a plotting class must be created to manage the plotting. The following code creates the class and plots the meshes with various colors.

# Create plotting object
plotter = pyvista.Plotter()
plotter.add_mesh(ant, 'r')
plotter.add_mesh(ant_copy, 'b')

# Add airplane mesh and make the color equal to the Y position.  Add a
# scalar bar associated with this mesh
plane_scalars = airplane.points[:, 1]
plotter.add_mesh(airplane, scalars=plane_scalars, stitle='Airplane Y\nLocation')

# Add annotation text
plotter.add_text('Ants and Plane Example')
plotter.show(screenshot='AntsAndPlane.png')

pyvista.PolyData Grid Class Methods¶

The following is a description of the methods available to a pyvista.PolyData object. It inherits all methods from the original vtk object, vtk.vtkPolyData.

Attributes

`area`	Mesh surface area
`cell_normals`	Cell normals
`face_normals`	Cell normals
`faces`	returns a pointer to the points as a numpy object
`lines`
`n_faces`	alias for `n_cells`
`n_open_edges`	The number of open edges on this mesh
`number_of_faces`	returns the number of cells
`obbTree`	obbTree is an object to generate oriented bounding box (OBB) trees.
`point_normals`	Point normals
`volume`	Mesh volume - will throw a VTK error/warning if not a closed surface

Methods

save(filename[, binary])

Writes a surface mesh to disk.

class pyvista.PolyData(*args, **kwargs)¶

Bases: vtkCommonDataModelPython.vtkPolyData, pyvista.core.pointset.PointSet, pyvista.core.filters.PolyDataFilters

Extends the functionality of a vtk.vtkPolyData object

Can be initialized in several ways:

Create an empty mesh
Initialize from a vtk.vtkPolyData
Using vertices
Using vertices and faces
From a file

Examples

>>> import pyvista
>>> from pyvista import examples
>>> import vtk
>>> import numpy as np

>>> surf = pyvista.PolyData()  # Create an empty mesh

>>> # Initialize from a vtk.vtkPolyData object
>>> vtkobj = vtk.vtkPolyData()
>>> surf = pyvista.PolyData(vtkobj)

>>> # initialize from just vertices
>>> vertices = np.array([[0, 0, 0], [1, 0, 0], [1, 0.5, 0], [0, 0.5, 0],])
>>> surf = pyvista.PolyData(vertices)

>>> # initialize from vertices and faces
>>> faces = np.hstack([[3, 0, 1, 2], [3, 0, 3, 2]]).astype(np.int8)
>>> surf = pyvista.PolyData(vertices, faces)

>>>  # initialize from a filename
>>> surf = pyvista.PolyData(examples.antfile)

property area¶

Mesh surface area

Returns: area – Total area of the mesh.
Return type: float

property cell_normals¶: Cell normals

property face_normals¶: Cell normals

property faces¶: returns a pointer to the points as a numpy object

property lines¶

property n_faces¶: alias for n_cells

property n_open_edges¶: The number of open edges on this mesh

property number_of_faces¶: returns the number of cells

property obbTree¶: obbTree is an object to generate oriented bounding box (OBB) trees. An oriented bounding box is a bounding box that does not necessarily line up along coordinate axes. The OBB tree is a hierarchical tree structure of such boxes, where deeper levels of OBB confine smaller regions of space.

property point_normals¶: Point normals

save(filename, binary=True)¶

Writes a surface mesh to disk.

Written file may be an ASCII or binary ply, stl, or vtk mesh file.

Parameters

filename (str) – Filename of mesh to be written. File type is inferred from the extension of the filename unless overridden with ftype. Can be one of the following types (.ply, .stl, .vtk)
binary (bool, optional) – Writes the file as binary when True and ASCII when False.

Notes

Binary files write much faster than ASCII and have a smaller file size.

property volume¶

Mesh volume - will throw a VTK error/warning if not a closed surface

Returns: volume – Total volume of the mesh.
Return type: float