Find Data using Queries

This document describes the functionality added to ParaView starting with version 3.8 to create selections based on certain criteria.

Following is a snapshot of the new Find Data Dialog showing a sample query for all points with DISPL magnitude in the range [15, 16].

Find Data Dialog showing a sample query for all points with DISPL magnitude in the range [15, 16]

When to use this feature?

This feature is useful every time you run into situations where you want to know the cell or the point at which a certain condition happens eg.

• What are the cells at which PRESSURE >= 12?
• What are the points with TEMP values in the range (12, 133)?
• Locate the cell at ID 122, in Block 2.

This feature provides a convenient way of creating selections based on certain criteria that can then be extracted from the data if needed.

How to access this functionality?

Edit Menu showing the "Find Data" option

• Select the data source or filter in the pipeline browser (or a port in case on multiple output filters) whose data you want to query.
• From the Edit menu, select "Find Data". This will popup of the "Find Data" dialog where you can enter your query.

Using the Find Data Dialog

Schematic for the Query Dialog

1. Choose whether to select cells or points.
2. Now we select the criteria. The first combo-box is the term i.e. IDs, array names, global ids etc. The second combo-box allows you to pick the condition. The third entry allows you to pick the value. If the condition is "is one of", you can specify multiple values separated by a comma(,). If your input dataset is a composite dataset you can optionally pick the block number to apply the selection criteria to. Similarly, when running in parallel, you can pick the processes id. You can always leave this optional values empty and then they will be ignored.
3. Once you have formulated your query, click the "Run Selection Query" button to run the query. The resulting cells (or points) will be shown in the table view. ParaView will also show the selected cells/points in all the 3D views.
4. To change color for the selection is shown in the views, you can use the "Selection Color" button.
5. You can add labels to the selected cells/points by picking a label array from the "Labels" combo-box. Additionally you can change the color for the labels using the "Label Color" button. Note that currently, the label mode/color only affects the active view.
6. You can modify your query and re-run the query using by clicking the "Run Selection Query" button again, until you are satisfied with the selection.
7. Now if you want to extract the selected cells/points from the dataset, you can use "Extract Selection" button.
8. For temporal datasets, "Plot Selection Over Time" button will be visible that can be used to plot the selection over time.

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