# What's the easiest way to determine if a VTK filter class is readily available in ParaView?

**URL:** https://discourse.vtk.org/t/whats-the-easiest-way-to-determine-if-a-vtk-filter-class-is-readily-available-in-paraview/688
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [April 4, 2019, 6:05pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/whats-the-easiest-way-to-determine-if-a-vtk-filter-class-is-readily-available-in-paraview/688 "2019-04-04T18:05:53Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![dlrdave](https://discourse.vtk.org/user_avatar/discourse.vtk.org/dlrdave/32/111_2.png) [@dlrdave](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/dlrdave)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2019, 6:05pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/whats-the-easiest-way-to-determine-if-a-vtk-filter-class-is-readily-available-in-paraview/688/1 "2019-04-04T18:05:53Z")

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I want to try out the [vtkConnectedPointsFilter](https://vtk.org/doc/nightly/html/classvtkConnectedPointsFilter.html) on some data I have without writing any code. I don’t see it in the massive list of filters available in the menu structure seen in ParaView’s “Filters \> Alphabetical \> …” submenu.

Is it there and I just don’t recognize its name, or is it not in ParaView?

Is there an easy-to-read/lookup mapping somewhere that says exactly what VTK class is underneath each of those menu items?

Thanks,  
David C.

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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: [April 4, 2019, 6:27pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/whats-the-easiest-way-to-determine-if-a-vtk-filter-class-is-readily-available-in-paraview/688/2 "2019-04-04T18:27:40Z")

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You can download ParaView source code and run the following :

`grep -r vtkConnectedPointsFilter | grep xml`

,which came up empty.

The mapping is defined in multiple xml files, the main one being :  
`ParaViewCore/ServerManager/SMApplication/Resources/filters.xml`

We may want to improve this somehow.

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### Author: ![dlrdave](https://discourse.vtk.org/user_avatar/discourse.vtk.org/dlrdave/32/111_2.png) [@dlrdave](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/dlrdave)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2019, 6:47pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/whats-the-easiest-way-to-determine-if-a-vtk-filter-class-is-readily-available-in-paraview/688/3 "2019-04-04T18:47:13Z")

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Thanks. At least there’s a way.

Since filters.xml is the main one, I can also just search in any online copy of that file in a git repo, for example:

> <https://github.com/Kitware/ParaView/blob/master/ParaViewCore/ServerManager/SMApplication/Resources/filters.xml>

I’ll clone it down and search with “git grep” for other filters I’m looking for too. Thanks for the quick reply.

D