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')
../_images/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

Return the mesh surface area.

cell_normals

Return the cell normals.

face_normals

Return the cell normals.

faces

Return a pointer to the points as a numpy object.

lines

Return a pointer to the lines as a numpy object.

n_faces

Return the number of cells.

n_open_edges

Return the number of open edges on this mesh.

number_of_faces

Return the number of cells.

obbTree

Return the obbTree of the polydata.

point_normals

Return the point normals.

verts

Get the vertex cells.

volume

Return the mesh volume.

Methods

is_all_triangles()

Return True if all the faces of the polydata are triangles.

save(filename[, binary])

Write a surface mesh to disk.
class pyvista.PolyData(var_inp=None, faces=None, n_faces=None, lines=None, n_lines=None, deep=False)

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

Extend 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

Parameters

  • var_inp (vtk.vtkPolyData, str, sequence, optional) –

    Flexible input type. Can be a vtk.vtkPolyData, in which case this PolyData object will be copied if deep=True and will be a shallow copy if deep=False.

    Also accepts a path, which may be local path as in 'my_mesh.stl' or global path like '/tmp/my_mesh.ply' or 'C:/Users/user/my_mesh.ply'.

    Otherwise, this must be a points array or list containing one or more points. Each point must have 3 dimensions.

  • faces (sequence, optional) –

    Face connectivity array. Faces must contain padding indicating the number of points in the face. For example, the two faces [10, 11, 12] and [20, 21, 22, 23] will be represented as [3, 10, 11, 12, 4, 20, 21, 22, 23]. This lets you have an arbitrary number of points per face.

    When not including the face connectivity array, each point will be assigned to a single vertex. This is used for point clouds that have no connectivity.

  • n_faces (int, optional) – Number of faces in the faces connectivity array. While optional, setting this speeds up the creation of the PolyData.

  • lines (sequence, optional) – The line connectivity array. Like faces, this array requires padding indicating the number of points in a line segment. For example, the two line segments [0, 1] and [1, 2, 3, 4] will be represented as [2, 0, 1, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4].

  • n_lines (int, optional) – Number of lines in the lines connectivity array. While optional, setting this speeds up the creation of the PolyData.

  • deep (bool, optional) – Whether to copy the inputs, or to create a mesh from them without copying them. Setting deep=True ensures that the original arrays can be modified outside the mesh without affecting the mesh. Default is False.

Examples

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

Create an empty mesh

>>> mesh = pyvista.PolyData()

Initialize from a vtk.vtkPolyData object

>>> vtkobj = vtk.vtkPolyData()
>>> mesh = pyvista.PolyData(vtkobj)

Initialize from just vertices

>>> vertices = np.array([[0, 0, 0], [1, 0, 0], [1, 0.5, 0], [0, 0.5, 0]])
>>> mesh = pyvista.PolyData(vertices)

Initialize from vertices and faces

>>> faces = np.hstack([[3, 0, 1, 2], [3, 0, 3, 2]])
>>> mesh = pyvista.PolyData(vertices, faces)

Initialize from vertices and lines

>>> lines = np.hstack([[2, 0, 1], [2, 1, 2]])
>>> mesh = pyvista.PolyData(vertices, lines=lines)

Initialize from a filename

>>> mesh = pyvista.PolyData(examples.antfile)
property area

Return the mesh surface area.

Returns

area – Total area of the mesh.

Return type

float

property cell_normals

Return the cell normals.

property face_normals

Return the cell normals.

property faces

Return a pointer to the points as a numpy object.

is_all_triangles()

Return True if all the faces of the polydata are triangles.

property lines

Return a pointer to the lines as a numpy object.

property n_faces

Return the number of cells.

Alias for n_cells.

property n_open_edges

Return the number of open edges on this mesh.

property number_of_faces

Return the number of cells.

property obbTree

Return the obbTree of the polydata.

An 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

Return the point normals.

save(filename, binary=True)

Write a surface mesh to disk.

Written file may be an ASCII or binary ply, stl, or vtk mesh file. If ply or stl format is chosen, the face normals are computed in place to ensure the mesh is properly saved.

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 verts

Get the vertex cells.

property volume

Return the mesh volume.

This will throw a VTK error/warning if not a closed surface

Returns

volume – Total volume of the mesh.

Return type

float