'draw' package
VTK interface


Introduction

This is a proof of concept for a Maxima-VTK interface.

Gnuplot and VTK are very different and I am trying to use the same syntax, the same graphics objects, and the same options. Despite my efforts, sometimes it is very difficult, or even impossible, to maintain 100% syntax compatibility. The main reason for developing this package is to make better graphics in 3D with Maxima, since Gnuplot is not a good program for this task.

This web site is presently the only source of information available for this (experimental) VTK interface. It is part of the Maxima draw package. The code presented in this site was tested with VTK 6.3, and it is not compatible with 5.* versions.

In Windows, since version 5.38 (thanks to Wolfgang Dautermann), the installer contains VTK and you are ready to use VTK from Maxima.

In Linux systems, you have to install these two packages:

# apt-get install vtk6 python-vtk6

In Mac systems, since version 5.40 (thanks to Tomio Arisaka), there is an installer with VTK precompiled. If you install this package and get problems, please read these messages from the Maxima mailing list: message1, message2, and message3.

Graphic objects

Click on the items below to see examples of graphic objects plotted with the VTK libraries.

Programming graphics

The objects listed above are the basic elements to build more complex scenes.

Global options

Global options are those which are related to the whole plot. They can be written anywhere in the scene description.

Local options

Local options are those which affect the appearance of individual graphic objects. They must be declared before the objects in the scene description.


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