ParaView Network Editor Plugin

This is an attempt to create a 2D network editor for ParaView, that replaces the built-in tree view pipeline editor.

This project is in large parts based on inviwo (https://github.com/inviwo/inviwo), which is licensed under the BSD 2-Clause license. See LICENSE.inviwo for details.

Usage

Linux binaries are available, see releases.

Building from Source

CMake ≥ 3.8, ParaView ≥ 5.8.0, and optionally graphviz are required.

ParaView needs to be build from source, with BUILD_SHARED_LIBS, PARAVIEW_BUILD_QT_GUI and PARAVIEW_INSTALL_DEVELOPMENT_FILES enabled.

Clone and build the plugin

git clone https://github.com/lhofmann/paraview-network-editor.git
mkdir paraview-network-editor-build
cd paraview-network-editor-build
cmake ../paraview-network-editor -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build .

Run paraview with

paraview-network-editor-build/paraview.sh

This script runs paraview and automatically loads the plugin. You can also manually load the file paraview-network-editor-build/lib/NetworkEditor.so as plugin.

Features / "Documentation"

• Can swap places with the main render view
• Indicators for visibility of output ports and color legends for active view
• Indicator for modified pipeline items
• Synchronize selection of sources and output ports
• Add/remove connections
  • drag new connections from output ports
  • drag existing connections from input port to change them
  • drag an existing connection to duplicate it
  • select connections and press delete to remove connections
• Valid/invalid connections are indicated during drag/drop by color (can be overridden by holding Shift key)
• Hide/show selected sources and color legends (context menu or double click)
• Copy/paste parts of the pipeline (context menu or Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V)
  • including representations (except color maps)
  • Crtl+Shift+V to preserve connections to sources outside of the selection
  • preserving connections works across different ParaView instances
• Support for filters with missing input connection
  • missing first input connection is temporarily replaced with temporary trivial producer to prevent crashes
• Automatic graph layout using optional dependency graphviz
• Use context menu or press Ctrl+Space to place a new source or filter at the last mouse click position
• Node positions are saved/loaded in state files
• All actions can be undone/redone, including moving nodes and graph layout
• Network can be saved as image (png or svg)
  • Automatically save an image of the pipeline when state files are saved or loaded (default:off)
• Settings menu (Edit > Settings... > Network Editor)
• Custom quick launch menu (Ctrl+Space while network editor in focus, or Meta+Space)
  • automatically assigns selected sources to multiple input ports
  • skips dialog for filters with multiple inputs
  • filters unsuitable to current selection are prefixed with ~, but can be added
• CI builds static graphviz libraries
• Editor viewport and scroll position are stored and loaded from state files
• Sticky notes for adding documentation within the network (Network Editor Sticky Note source)
  • note can be resized by dragging its edges
  • full text shown in tooltip
  • supports HTML

TODO / Known Issues

• Add search, that selects pipeline items by name, type, ...
• Add a dock widget, that contains a filterable list of sources/filters, that can be drag/dropped into the network editor
• Display and edit property links
• Add support for grouping/ungrouping parts of the pipeline (custom filters / vtkSMCompoundSourceProxy)
• Add tooltips, that show information about sources and their output ports
• Custom graph layout algorithm, that takes grid into account (not possible with graphviz)
• Choose better node positions when inserting new sources
• Key shortcuts do not work when the dock widget is detached from the main window