VTK to Binary

This code converts an ascii VTK file to a raw binary file.

Input File:

The input file can be either of the followings:

Data Type	File Structure	File Extension	Data Structure
ASCII or binary	legacy	VTK	StructuredPoints
ASCII or binary	XML	VTI	ImageData
ASCII or binary	XML	VTP	PolyData
ASCII or binary	XML	VTU	UnstructuredGrid

Output file:

The output file has *.raw file extension and can be stored as either an ASCII file or a binary file.

Converted Arrays:

The content of files that will be converted are all vtkDataArrays in the vtkPointData. The arrays can consist of:

• All scalar arrays
• All vector arrays
• All normal arrays
• All tensor arrays
• All field data arrays.

Each array may has different number of components. But all arrays should have the same number of tuples.

Output Arrays:

The output is written to the output file as following:

The output array is an array of size:

"Number of total components of all arrays" x "number of tuples".

where, the "Number of total components of all arrays" is the sum of number of components of all arrays. If we have found three Arrays:

Array A: size a * m
Array B: size b * m
Array C: size c * m

Then the output array is of size (a+b+c) * m, and is written as follow : Column 1 Column 2 Column 3

First row:    A11 A12 A13 ...  B11 B12 B13 ...  C11 C12 C13 ...
Second row:   A21 A22 A23 ...  B21 B22 B23 ...  C21 C22 C23 ...
              <-- a times -->  <-- b times -->  <-- c times -->
              ...
              ...
m-th row:     Am1 Am2 Am3 ...  Bm1 Bm2 Bm3 ...  Cm1 Cm2 Cm3 ...

Prerequisites

1. Install GNU GCC compiler, OpenMP, and Cmake:

   sudo apt-get install g++ libomp-dev cmake -y
   

2. Install VTK development:

   sudo apt install libvtk5-dev -y
   

   Alternatively, download VTK and compile it.

Install

Get the source code

git clone git@github.com:ameli/vtk2raw.git
cd vtk2raw

Compile in ./build directory

mkdir build
cmake -B build .
make -C build

After the compilation, the executable file is located in ./bin/vtk2raw.

Usage

./bin/vtk2raw  InputFileName.vtk  OutputFileName.raw  <BinaryOutputFile>

The argument BinaryOutputFile is optional, it can be either 0 or 1 to indicate whether the output file should be ASCII or binary, respectively.

License

BSD 3-clause.