VTK XML File Formats

[ivan-pi]

Currently, only the legacy VTK format is available. It would be nice to finally support LBM-specific writers for the modern XML-based format.

References:

• http://www.vtk.org/VTK/img/file-formats.pdf
• https://kitware.github.io/vtk-examples/site/VTKFileFormats/#xml-file-formats

An extra step further would be the Paraview Data Format, which can be used to store a collection:

• https://www.paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView/Data_formats#PVD_File_Format

The .pvd format doesn't support the legacy VTK format.

For a full list of formats supported by Paraview, check the list of (available) readers: https://www.paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView/Users_Guide/List_of_readers#AVS_UCD_Reader

[ivan-pi]

The MFEM framework has an nice example of a DataCollection class: https://github.com/mfem/mfem/blob/5308d285f732c45f3c381bcee415581fd34b1cb2/fem/datacollection.hpp#L484

It's also worth mining their VTK header for ideas: https://github.com/mfem/mfem/blob/f66df8d34de1a8559a4f220cd2119df7b789a2aa/mesh/vtk.hpp