Load and Plot from a File

Read a dataset from a known file type.

Loading a mesh is trivial - if your data is in one of the many supported file formats, simply use pyvista.read() to load your spatially referenced dataset into a PyVista mesh object.

The following code block uses a built-in example file and displays an airplane mesh.

import pyvista as pv
from pyvista import examples

The following code block uses a built-in example file, displays an airplane mesh and returns the camera’s position:

# Get a sample file
filename = examples.planefile
filename

Out:

'/home/runner/work/pyvista/pyvista/pyvista/examples/airplane.ply'

Note the above filename, it’s a .ply file - one of the many supported formats in PyVista.

mesh = pv.read(filename)
cpos = mesh.plot()

You can also take a screenshot without creating an interactive plot window using the Plotter:

plotter = pv.Plotter(off_screen=True)
plotter.add_mesh(mesh)
plotter.show(screenshot="myscreenshot.png")

The points from the mesh are directly accessible as a NumPy array:

mesh.points

Out:

pyvista_ndarray([[896.994  ,  48.7601 ,  82.2656 ],
                 [906.593  ,  48.7601 ,  80.7452 ],
                 [907.539  ,  55.4902 ,  83.6581 ],
                 ...,
                 [806.665  , 627.363  ,   5.11482],
                 [806.665  , 654.432  ,   7.51998],
                 [806.665  , 681.537  ,   9.48744]], dtype=float32)

The faces from the mesh are also directly accessible as a NumPy array:

mesh.faces.reshape(-1, 4)[:, 1:]  # triangular faces

Out:

array([[   0,    1,    2],
       [   0,    2,    3],
       [   4,    5,    1],
       ...,
       [1324, 1333, 1323],
       [1325, 1216, 1334],
       [1325, 1334, 1324]])

Loading other files types is just as easy! Simply pass your file path to the pyvista.read() function and that’s it!

Here are a few other examples - simply replace examples.download_* in the examples below with pyvista.read('path/to/you/file.ext')

Example STL file:

mesh = examples.download_cad_model()
cpos = [(107.0, 68.5, 204.0), (128.0, 86.5, 223.5), (0.45, 0.36, -0.8)]
mesh.plot(cpos=cpos)

Example OBJ file

mesh = examples.download_doorman()
mesh.plot(cpos="xy")

Example BYU file

mesh = examples.download_teapot()
mesh.plot(cpos=[-1, 2, -5], show_edges=True)

Example VTK file

mesh = examples.download_bunny_coarse()
cpos = [(0.2, 0.3, 0.9), (0, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0)]
mesh.plot(cpos=cpos, show_edges=True, color=True)