Time Implementation

The new time support in VTK is described here. The important things to note:

• Discrete as well as contiguous time values are supported
• Update time has to be requested by the final consumer (usually mapper, i.e. display in paraview)
• Some algorithms may request more than 1 time step.

In ParaView 2, the time is controlled by a widget that belongs to the readers object inspector. This does not work well with the new time support as the time is no longer a parameter of the reader but rather something that needs to be set at the end of the pipeline. Here is how I am thinking of implementing time in ParaView 3.

Time as a property of displays/views

Each display will have a time property. By default, these will be linked to a time property of the view that contains them. Furthermore, the time property of all views will be linked to a global time property. The time of the active display will be displayed on the toolbar.