This manual is only intended for Windows for now.

This tool hasn't been tested with other operating systems.

Build instructions

• Download CMake and add cmake.exe to your PATH environment variable, e.g. C:\Program Files\CMake\bin\.

• Download Visual Studio 16 2019 Build Tools because when using MinGW, some functions are missing and the build fails. Add msbuild to your PATH, e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\BuildTools\MSBuild\Current\Bin.

• Download VTK 8.2.0 source from here and unzip it under vtu2nrrd\libs.

• Download InsightToolkit (ITK) 5.0.1 source from here and unzip it under vtu2nrrd\libs.

• Build VTK with Visual Studio:

  cd vtu2nrrd\libs\VTK-8.2.0\build
  cmake -DCMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES=Debug build ..
  msbuild VTK.sln
  

• Build ITK with Visual Studio:

  • Go to the ITK build folder:

  cd vtu2nrrd\libs\ITK-5.0.1\build
  

  • Configure and generate ITK:

    In the command line below, replace <path> with the path to your VTK installation, ending with \libs\VTK-8.2.0\build. It apparently requires an absolute path.

    The module ITKVtkGlue is added to use a VTK to ITK image converter. Caution: in CMake GUI, this module is confusingly called "Module_ItkVtkGlue" with lowercase "tk". Go figure.

    ITK_BUILD_DEFAULT_MODULES is off to build as few modules as possible.

    In CMAKE_FLAGS, /FS has been added to the default flags to work around a bug that is supposed to be fixed in the next VS version 16.6.

  cmake -DModule_ITKVtkGlue:BOOL=ON -DVTK_DIR:PATH=<path> -DITK_BUILD_DEFAULT_MODULES:BOOL=OFF -DCMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES=Debug -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="/FS /DWIN32 /D_WINDOWS /W3" build ..
  

  • Build ITK:

  msbuild ITK.sln
  

• Add the VTK build path, ending with \libs\VTK-8.2.0\build\bin\Debug to your PATH environment variable.

• Build the program with Visual Studio 16 2019:

  cd vtu2nrrd\build
  cmake -DVTK_DIR:PATH=libs\VTK-8.2.0/build -DITK_DIR:PATH=libs\ITK-5.0.1/build -DCMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES=Debug build ..
  msbuild vtu2nrrd.vcxproj
  

Usage

Run:

Debug\vtu2nrrd.exe path\to\test.vtu