# Does the installation of paraview automatically install VTK as well?

**URL:** https://discourse.vtk.org/t/does-the-installation-of-paraview-automatically-install-vtk-as-well/1861
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [October 3, 2019, 11:46pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/does-the-installation-of-paraview-automatically-install-vtk-as-well/1861 "2019-10-03T23:46:14Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![zzzhhh](https://discourse.vtk.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/65b543/32.png) [@zzzhhh](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/zzzhhh)
#### Post date: [October 3, 2019, 11:46pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/does-the-installation-of-paraview-automatically-install-vtk-as-well/1861/1 "2019-10-03T23:46:14Z")

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I heard that paraview is built around VTK, so I was wondering if the installation of paraview automatically installs VTK as well. Specifically, I hope CGAL’s cmake script can automatically detect the existence of VTK and set VTK\_DIR accordingly. For now, this cache variable is VTK\_DIR-NOTFOUND after I successfully installed the latest version of paraview. If the installation of paraview includes VTK, could you please tell me what path to set for VTK\_DIR? If not, please confirm that VTK is separate from paraview. In that case, I would install VTK separately. Thank you.

Environment:

- Windows 10, version 1903, 64bit
- Paraview 5.7.0
- CMake 3.15.3
- CGAL 4.14 branch
- Visual Studio 2015 Update 3

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### Author: ![mwestphal](https://discourse.vtk.org/user_avatar/discourse.vtk.org/mwestphal/32/19_2.png) [@mwestphal](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/mwestphal)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2019, 12:51am UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/does-the-installation-of-paraview-automatically-install-vtk-as-well/1861/2 "2019-10-04T00:51:42Z")

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ParaView internally packages VTK, but it is not a CMake usable VTK. You need to install VTK to be able to build CGAL.

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### Author: ![ben.boeckel](https://discourse.vtk.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/ben.boeckel)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2019, 7:44pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/does-the-installation-of-paraview-automatically-install-vtk-as-well/1861/3 "2019-10-04T19:44:58Z")

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Well, it is technically usable, but ParaView stuffs its CMake package information under its own directory (where CMake doesn’t search by default). If using ParaView, you need to agree on the VTK to use with it. But yes, it is best to use a standalone VTK for non-ParaView projects.