External Control of ParaView Visualization

Abstract

3D visualization is essential for many industrial applications. For instance, in the oil and gas industry, the visualization of reservoirs and their associated wells helps petroleum engineers to develop exploration and production strategies. For that purpose, there are integrated domain- oriented commercial software solutions. However, their 3D visualization part has significant limitations due to their closed source nature and dedicated domain. An alternative is to use general purpose open-source visualization platform such as ParaView. The challenge is to be used seamlessly in combination with in-house data management system which needs an integration effort. Embedding one application into another requires significant effort of programing, especially, when the technology stack of the data management application is different from the one ParaView is built on. In this study we present the solution of using ParaView along with a hypothetical corporate data-management application without embedding one into another. The inter-process communication protocol is based on ParaView Python API. The proposed approach allows using the full power of ParaView and data management application with minimal integration efforts.