shore export

Export .geo volumes or a .npz surface layer to VTK XML for ParaView.

• One .geo or .npz input → one .vts StructuredGrid.
• Two or more .geo inputs → one .vtm MultiBlock, with one PyVista block per input. Block labels are derived from each input's filename stem.

Synopsis

shore export [OPTIONS] INPUTS...

Arguments

Argument	Description
INPUTS...	One or more input files. A single .geo / .npz produces a .vts; multiple .geo inputs produce a .vtm MultiBlock.

Options

Option	Default	Description
-o / --output PATH	<first-input-stem>.vts (single) or <first-input-stem>.vtm (multi)	Output file path. The right extension (.vts / .vtm) is forced if missing.
--no-jacobian	off	Omit Jacobian cell data (applies to .geo inputs in both single and multi modes)
--help	—	Show this help and exit

Output

A VTK StructuredGrid file (.vts) readable by ParaView, VisIt, and PyVista. The .vts extension is appended automatically if the output path has no extension.

From a .geo file:

• Grid dimensions: (ni, nj+1, nk) — the j-direction is closed (periodic wrap repeated).
• Point data: x, y, z coordinates.
• Cell data: Jacobian — scalar triple product $J=({\mathbf{e}}_2\times {\mathbf{e}}_1)\cdot {\mathbf{e}}_3$ for each cell (unless --no-jacobian).

From an .npz file:

• Grid dimensions: (ni, nj+1, 1) — a single surface layer, j-closed.
• No cell data (a single layer has no volume cells).

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	File written successfully
1	Input not found, unrecognised extension, or missing k0 key in .npz

Examples

Export a volume grid and open in ParaView:

shore export sphere.geo
# → sphere.vts
paraview sphere.vts

Export with a custom output path:

shore export sphere.geo -o results/sphere_grid.vts

Export a projected surface layer:

shore export sphere_k0.npz -o sphere_surface.vts
paraview sphere_surface.vts

Export without Jacobian cell data (smaller file):

shore export sphere.geo --no-jacobian

Viewing in ParaView

After loading a .vts file in ParaView:

1. Apply Surface with Edges representation to inspect cell structure.
2. Color by Jacobian to identify low-quality cells (blue = low, red = high with the default RdYlGn palette).
3. Use Clip or Slice to inspect interior layers.

Multi-block export

Pass multiple .geo files in one invocation; SHORE bundles them into a single ParaView-friendly .vtm MultiBlock. Block keys inside the .vtm come from each file's stem.

# 6-block cubed-sphere topology — sphere_<label>.geo  →  sphere.vtm
shore export sphere_*.geo -o sphere.vtm
paraview sphere.vtm

# 5-block flat-caps cylinder primitive
shore export bg_*.geo -o background.vtm

The shell glob is the natural way to drive this; the CLI itself takes a list of paths, so shore export a.geo b.geo c.geo -o out.vtm works equally well.

If you pass a .npz together with .geo files, the command rejects the mix — multi-input mode is .geo-only by design (a single .vtm cannot represent both volume blocks and a surface layer unambiguously). Convert the surface separately if you need both.

See also

• shore check — validate Jacobians without exporting
• shore view — interactive PyVista viewer (no ParaView required)
• shore.io.vtk — Python API for VTK export
• shore.topology.sphere_cap — 6-block polar cap topology