This section details the various menus that MayaVi provides. Almost all the menu items have hot keys associated with them. The underlined letter indicates the key sequence to be used. Consider the case of the menu item (the letter N is underlined) that is in the menu (the letter F is underlined). This can be reached by using the following key strokes. Alt-F followed by N. The Menu itself requires the Alt modifier but the menu item does not. The following are the various menus that MayaVi provides.
The menu provides the following menu items.
This creates a new MayaVi visualization window that is completely independent of the first window. Any number of such windows can be created.
This provides a submenu containing two items.
This provides a GUI dialog from which a VTK file can be selected
for opening. Once the file is opened a new
DataVizManager is created and a GUI dialog
for configuring the data file is provided.
This provides a GUI dialog from which a VTK XML file can be chosen. This is a new VTK format and is only available in VTK versions higher than 4.0.
This provides a sub menu from which either a PLOT3D file containing
single block or multi-block binary structured grid data can be
selected for opening. Once the file is opened a new
DataVizManager is created and a GUI dialog
for configuring the data file is provided.
This provides a sub menu from which an EnSight case file can be opened.
This provides a submenu containing two items.
This loads a VRML2 scene into the current visualization.
This provides a menu containing all the VRML files that are already opened. The chosen VRML file is closed and the VRML files actors are removed from the rendered scene.
This provides a submenu containing three items.
This loads a saved complete visualization.
This creates new ModuleManagers for
the current DataVizManager and loads
ModuleManagers that have been saved to a file
into the newly created ones.
This is slightly different from the previous menu item and
loads the first of the saved ModuleManagers
into the current ModuleManager and for the
subsequent saved ModuleManagers it creates
new ModuleManagers and loads
ModuleManagers from the saved file.
This provides a submenu containing four items.
This saves the entire visualization configuration to a file such that it can be loaded by the menu's menu item.
This creates saves the current
DataVizManager to a file. This can be loaded
as a visualization.
This enables one to store the currently active
ModuleManager into a file such that it can be
loaded later.
This enables one to store the all the
ModuleManagers for the currently active
DataVizManager into a file such that it can
be loaded later.
Provides a menu which in turn provides menu items to export the visualized scene to a Post Script file, PPM/BMP/TIFF/JPEG/PNG image, Open Inventor, Geomview OOGL, VRML and RenderMan RIB files. It is also possible to save the scene to a vector graphic via GL2PS. This is only available if VTK is built with GL2PS support.
Provides submenu's to close the current
DataVizManager. This means that all the
ModuleManagers of that particular
DataVizManager will also be deleted. It also
provides menus to close the currently active VRML and 3D Studio scenes
that have been imported.
Close all the DataVizManagers and all the
imported VRML2 and 3D Studio scenes.
Close this particular MayaVi Window. If this is the only MayaVi window the application exits completely.
The menu provides the following menu items.
Provides a sub-menu which contains a list of all available
Modules. This list is dynamically generated
based on the available modules.
Provides a sub-menu which contains a list of all available
Filters. This list is dynamically generated
based on the available filters.
This creates a GUI that shows the entire VTK visualization pipeline.
The objects in the pipeline can be configured by double clicking on
the items. If there are a large number of objects this can become
confusing to use and it would be better to use the pipeline segment
browser configuration provided with the configuration for each
Module
The menu provides the following menu items.
Provides a GUI using which one can edit the default preferences. The preferences allow one to set various default settings including foreground color, background color, default directory where the file related dialogs will open in initially. These options can be saved so that the next time MayaVi is started it will use these defaults. If you set the default directory to an empty one the directory that the file open/save dialogs will use will be intelligently chosen. The stereo rendering option enables stereo rendering in the MayaVi window. If the save current lighting option is set then the current lighting is saved as the default and used in all subsequent MayaVi visualizations.
The search path setting allows the user to specify a list of
directories where user defined sources, modules and filters are made
available. The search path is a ':'-separated string and is specified
like the PYTHONPATH. '~', '~user' and '$VAR' are all expanded. Each
of the directories specified in this string can have a Sources/ , a Modules/ and a Filters/ directory inside
where user defined sources, modules and filters can be stored. These
modules and filters will be made available inside the
sub-menu of the
,
and
menus respectively. These sources,
modules and filters can be used from the command line or from a Python
interpreter session by using 'User.SourceName' (sources cannot be
specified from the command line), 'User.ModuleName' or
'User.FilterName'. When creating user defined sources or modules or
filters make sure that the name of the module is the same as the name
of the class that defines the particular object.
Provides a simple GUI to configure the Visualization RenderWindow. This is also where one can change the stereo rendering options.
Allows one to change the default foreground color.
Allows one to change the default background color.
Pops up a small window where debug messages are printed. This is very useful if you run into trouble and want to know what happened. It also shows the function call sequence. The messages are also printed to stderr.
Toggles the visibility of the control panel. This can be very useful when you want to do a full screen visualization.
This function reloads all the currently loaded Python modules. This is very useful while debugging a new feature for some module that one is creating. One may also see funny behavior for already instantiated objects.