ParaView/Users Guide/Plotting and Probing Data

There are multiple ways of probing a data set for point or cell values. The simplest is the Probe Location filter. Additionally, there are a variety of filters to plot data with respect to time, location, or grid object Id.

Probe Filter

The probe filter can be used to query a data set for point or cell data.

Options for the probe filter are:

• Show point button is used to show where the center of the sphere is for generating the probe points.
• Center on bounds will place the sphere center at the center of the data set's bounds.
• The sphere center can either be set in the properties tab of the object inspector or in the 3d view with the mouse cursor. To choose a new point in the 3d view window, press P and then click on the desired point. Note that the Show Point option must be selected.

The output for this filter is a single cell comprised of a set of points in a vtkPolyData.

Plot Data / Scatter Plot

The Plot Data filter and Scatter Plot filter are very similar in functionality with the Scatter Plot filter being a deprecated version of the Plot Data filter. The main difference is that the Scatter Plot filter's output is a 1D rectilinear grid while the Plot Data filter's output is the same type as the input.

The Plot Data filter plots point or cell data over the entire data set. By default the x axis values are determined with respect to their point or cell index. In the Display tab of the Object inspector the user can choose which point or cell array to use as the x axis values. The Display tab also gives options for which arrays are to be plotted as well as plot preferences such as line thickness and marker style.