Yet more simple python API

berk.geveci · February 8, 2026, 2:06pm

Hi folks,

Over this weekend, I prototyped another layer of simple python interface that is a lot closer to pyvista and vedo. Here is a description:

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/berkgeveci/f4043474380084debbf2cde0b4f6ea9c

simple-api.md

# VTK Simple API

The VTK Simple API provides a Pythonic, concise interface for common VTK
tasks — creating sources, applying filters, reading/writing files, and
visualizing data. It is designed so that users can go from data to rendered
image in a single line of code.

```python
from vtkmodules.simple_api import *

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The functional and postfix part are super easy to implement and maintain. Just a matter of registering certain filters and their short names. There was a little bit more work involved in dusting off the representation-views framework and improving it. There is yet more work to be done there such as volume representations, axes, selection etc. I also did not add support for composite datasets so that’s on my list too.

I would love to hear what you think.

Louis_Gombert · February 9, 2026, 10:18am

Berk, this looks very nice.

This VTK Python API is now very similar to ParaView’s. Maybe this would be confusing for users of both VTK and ParaView simple?

ParaView does

from paraview.simple import *
s = Sphere(Radius=3.0)
Show()

and VTK does

from vtkmodules.simple_api import *
s = sphere(radius=3.0)
s.show()

I don’t have any suggestions here, just noting the similarity