Visualization overview

One popular question is how to integrate VTK with OpenCascade. In Analysis Situs, there is a comprehensive solution to address that problem, including rendering and interactive picking.

Analysis Situs employs VTK library (see [Schroeder, 2006] for comprehensive text book) for 3D and 2D visualization. VTK itself offers an intelligent and flexible architecture of multidisciplinary scientific visualization. In the ecosystem of Analysis Situs, this architecture is adopted in a specific way which deserves additional explanation.

The entire architecture of Analysis Situs is built around its Data Model. For each object (called a Data Node), there can be one (and only one) Presentation instance which contains the visualization logic for the Node. Single Presentation does not limit the possibilities to visualize a particular object in diverse ways. Plenty different ways of visualization are supported because the Presentation class encapsulates a set of Pipelines. A Pipeline in Analysis Situs is a specific type corresponding to VTK pipelines.