Unfortunately there is no example for vtkXMLPStructuredGridWriter class (VTK Classes not used in the Examples). So I decided to write the simplest code to generate *.vts and .pvts files for a structured grid, very similar to the case you are looking for.
The following code uses MPI and VTK to write parallel structured grid files. In this example, we have two processes which create their own .vts files and the vtkXMLPStructuredGridWriter class writes the .pvts file:
// MPI Library
#include <mpi.h>
//VTK Library
#include <vtkXMLPStructuredGridWriter.h>
#include <vtkStructuredGrid.h>
#include <vtkSmartPointer.h>
#include <vtkFloatArray.h>
#include <vtkCellData.h>
#include <vtkMPIController.h>
#include <vtkProgrammableFilter.h>
#include <vtkInformation.h>
struct Args {
vtkProgrammableFilter* pf;
int local_extent[6];
};
// function to operate on the point attribute data
void execute (void* arg) {
Args* args = reinterpret_cast<Args*>(arg);
auto info = args->pf->GetOutputInformation(0);
auto output_tmp = args->pf->GetOutput();
auto input_tmp = args->pf->GetInput();
vtkStructuredGrid* output = dynamic_cast<vtkStructuredGrid*>(output_tmp);
vtkStructuredGrid* input = dynamic_cast<vtkStructuredGrid*>(input_tmp);
output->ShallowCopy(input);
output->SetExtent(args->local_extent);
}
int main (int argc, char *argv[]) {
MPI_Init (&argc, &argv);
int myrank;
MPI_Comm_rank (MPI_COMM_WORLD, &myrank);
int lx {10}, ly{10}, lz{10}; //local dimensions of the process's grid
int dims[3] = {lx+1, ly+1, lz+1};
int global_extent[6] = {0, 2*lx, 0, ly, 0, lz};
int local_extent[6] = {myrank*lx, (myrank+1)*lx, 0, ly, 0, lz};
// Create and Initialize vtkMPIController
auto contr = vtkSmartPointer<vtkMPIController>::New();
contr->Initialize(&argc, &argv, 1);
int nranks = contr->GetNumberOfProcesses();
int rank = contr->GetLocalProcessId();
// Create grid points, allocate memory and Insert them
auto points = vtkSmartPointer<vtkPoints>::New();
points->Allocate(dims[0]*dims[1]*dims[2]);
for (int k=0; k<dims[2]; ++k)
for (int j=0; j<dims[1]; ++j)
for (int i=0; i<dims[0]; ++i)
points->InsertPoint(i + j*dims[0] + k*dims[0]*dims[1],
i+rank*(dims[0]-1), j, k);
// Create a density field. Note that the number of cells is always less than
// number of grid points by an amount of one so we use dims[i]-1
auto density = vtkSmartPointer<vtkFloatArray>::New();
density->SetNumberOfComponents(1);
density->SetNumberOfTuples((dims[0]-1)*(dims[1]-1)*(dims[2]-1));
density->SetName ("density");
int index;
for (int k=0; k<lz; ++k)
for (int j=0; j<ly; ++j)
for (int i=0; i<lx; ++i) {
index = i + j*(dims[0]-1) + k*(dims[0]-1)*(dims[1]-1);
density->SetValue(index, i+j+k);
}
// Create a vtkProgrammableFilter
auto pf = vtkSmartPointer<vtkProgrammableFilter>::New();
// Initialize an instance of Args
Args args;
args.pf = pf;
for(int i=0; i<6; ++i) args.local_extent[i] = local_extent[i];
pf->SetExecuteMethod(execute, &args);
// Create a structured grid and assign point data and cell data to it
auto structuredGrid = vtkSmartPointer<vtkStructuredGrid>::New();
structuredGrid->SetExtent(global_extent);
pf->SetInputData(structuredGrid);
structuredGrid->SetPoints(points);
structuredGrid->GetCellData()->AddArray(density);
// Create the parallel writer and call some functions
auto parallel_writer = vtkSmartPointer<vtkXMLPStructuredGridWriter>::New();
parallel_writer->SetInputConnection(pf->GetOutputPort());
parallel_writer->SetController(contr);
parallel_writer->SetFileName("test.pvts");
parallel_writer->SetNumberOfPieces(nranks);
parallel_writer->SetStartPiece(rank);
parallel_writer->SetEndPiece(rank);
parallel_writer->SetDataModeToBinary();
parallel_writer->Update();
parallel_writer->Write();
contr->Finalize();
// WARNING: it seems that MPI_Finalize is not necessary since we are using
// Finalize() function from vtkMPIController class. Uncomment the following
// line and see what happens.
// MPI_Finalize ();
return 0;
}
This code only writes some data (in this case density which is a scalar) into a file and do not render it. For visualization you will need a software like Paraview.
To run this code, you can use this CMake file:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8)
PROJECT(PXMLStructuredGridWriter)
add_executable(PXMLStructuredGridWriter parallel_vtk.cpp)
find_package(VTK REQUIRED)
include(${VTK_USE_FILE})
target_link_libraries(PXMLStructuredGridWriter ${VTK_LIBRARIES})
find_package(MPI REQUIRED)
include_directories(${MPI_INCLUDE_PATH})
target_link_libraries(PXMLStructuredGridWriter ${MPI_LIBRARIES})
At the end you will find an xml file like this in the same directory that you have the executable:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<VTKFile type="PStructuredGrid" version="0.1" byte_order="LittleEndian" header_type="UInt32" compressor="vtkZLibDataCompressor">
<PStructuredGrid WholeExtent="0 20 0 10 0 10" GhostLevel="2">
<PCellData>
<PDataArray type="Float32" Name="density"/>
</PCellData>
<PPoints>
<PDataArray type="Float32" Name="Points" NumberOfComponents="3"/>
</PPoints>
<Piece Extent="0 10 0 10 0 10" Source="test_0.vts"/>
<Piece Extent="10 20 0 10 0 10" Source="test_1.vts"/>
</PStructuredGrid>
</VTKFile>
