VTK Export for AutoCAD is a Visualization Toolkit (.vtk) file export plug-in for AutoCAD®. This plug-in gives AutoCAD the ability to export geometric data from AutoCAD to ASCII and Binary VTK files.
VTK Export for AutoCAD extracts facet data from 3D Solids as well as 3D Face, Polygon Mesh and PolyFace Mesh objects in the active AutoCAD drawing and exports it to a VTK file. These objects can lie anywhere in space. 3D Solids are tessellated into triangular faces. The level of tessellation can be controlled by adjusting the resolution slider in the VTK Export for AutoCAD options dialog box. A lower resolution will yield coarse meshes (lesser faces), whereas a higher resolution will result in finer meshes (more faces).
VTK Export for AutoCAD is very easy to use. Once installed, it must be loaded into the AutoCAD environment. There are simple instructions for this in the ReadMe file. Once loaded it adds new commands to AutoCAD's existing commands and a new submenu called "VTKExport" to the AutoCAD menu containing these newly added commands.
The 'VTKExport' menu consists of the following commands:
# VTKExport - Exports an VTK file
# VTKExportHelp - Displays the VTK Export for AutoCAD help file
# VTKExportRegister - Registers your copy of VTK Export for AutoCAD
# VTKExportAbout - Displays the VTK Export for AutoCAD About box
VTK Export for AutoCAD comes with detailed documentation for each command as well as a tutorial to get you started in the shortest possible time.
The VTK File Format
The Visualization ToolKit (VTK) is an open source, freely available software system for 3D computer graphics, image processing, and visualization used by thousands of researchers and developers around the world. VTK consists of a C++ class library, and several interpreted interface layers including Tcl/Tk, Java, and Python. The Toolkit stores geometric data in a file format known as VTK. Very few CAD applications have the ability to read and write VTK files.