# Enabling/disabling filters in a pipeline

**URL:** https://discourse.vtk.org/t/enabling-disabling-filters-in-a-pipeline/7889
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [February 22, 2022, 1:34pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/enabling-disabling-filters-in-a-pipeline/7889 "2022-02-22T13:34:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![sboogert](https://discourse.vtk.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@sboogert](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/sboogert)
#### Post date: [February 22, 2022, 1:34pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/enabling-disabling-filters-in-a-pipeline/7889/1 "2022-02-22T13:34:20Z")

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I have an application (Geant4) where I would like to give users the ability to enable or disable filters in a pipeline. For example

polydata → clean → triangle → normal → feature → …

Is there a simple way to disable the action of one of the filters? I have looked through as carefully as I can the API/documentation for vtkPolyDataAlgorithm, vtkAlogrithm and did not find anything.

If this is something a user has to implement, does anyone have examples where this is done elegantly?

Any help would be appreciated, best  
Stewart

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### Author: ![cory.quammen](https://discourse.vtk.org/user_avatar/discourse.vtk.org/cory.quammen/32/6751_2.png) [@cory.quammen](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/cory.quammen)
#### Post date: [February 22, 2022, 2:35pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/enabling-disabling-filters-in-a-pipeline/7889/2 "2022-02-22T14:35:17Z")

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There is not a way to disable a filter as far as I know. Instead, you’ll have to bypass a filter you don’t want to use by changing inputs/outputs, i.e., chaining them together differently.