VTK PolyData#

.vtp read + write eager

Summary of the specification#

.vtp is the VTK XML format for surface and curve geometry. A <Piece> declares its point and cell counts as attributes, then carries <Points> plus up to four cell containers — <Verts>, <Lines>, <Strips> and <Polys> — each expressed as a connectivity array and an offsets array rather than the legacy size-prefixed lists. Attributes travel in <PointData> and <CellData> with the same inline, base64 or appended storage choices as the other XML formats.

Specification at a glance#

root	<VTKFile type=”PolyData”>
cell containers	Verts, Lines, Strips, Polys
connectivity	paired connectivity + offsets DataArrays (0-based)
storage	ascii, base64 binary, or appended raw block
attributes	PointData / CellData, one named DataArray each

Read the full VTK PolyData specification ↗

Reading#

import polyxios as px

mesh = px.read("model.vtp")
mesh.vertices          # (n, 3)
mesh.element_types     # element groups found in the file

Writing#

px.write(mesh, "out.vtp")

This codec takes no format-specific options.

Quirks worth knowing#

Triangle strips are expanded into individual triangles on read; writing emits polygons rather than re-striping.
Each cell container becomes its own element group, so lines and polygons in one file stay distinguishable.