Picking Elements of a Mesh

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Pick different elements on meshes using enable_element_picking().

The different elements of a mesh are:

• Mesh: pick the entire mesh (equivalent to enable_mesh_picking().)

• Cell: pick a cell of the mesh (equivalent to enable_cell_picking().)

• Face: pick a single face of a cell on the mesh

• Edge: pick a single edge of a cell on the mesh

• Point: pick a single point on the mesh

These types are captured in the pyvista.plotting.opts.ElementType enum class.

import pyvista as pv
from pyvista.plotting.opts import ElementType

Pick Face on Voxel Cell

mesh = pv.Wavelet()

pl = pv.Plotter()
pl.add_mesh(mesh, show_edges=True, pickable=True)
pl.enable_element_picking(mode=ElementType.FACE)

pl.camera_position = pv.CameraPosition(
    position=(13.52, 9.911, 11.83),
    focal_point=(2.229, -2.782, 6.843),
    viewup=(-0.1764, -0.2198, 0.9595),
)

pl.show(auto_close=False)

# Programmatically pick a face to make example look nice
try:
    width, height = pl.window_size
    pl.iren._mouse_right_button_press(419, 263)
    pl.iren._mouse_right_button_release()
except AttributeError:
    # ignore this section when manually closing the window
    pass

Static Scene

Interactive Scene

Pick an Edge of a Cell

sphere = pv.Sphere()

pl = pv.Plotter()
pl.add_mesh(sphere, show_edges=True, pickable=True)
pl.enable_element_picking(mode=ElementType.EDGE)

pl.camera_position = pv.CameraPosition(
    position=(0.7897, 0.7521, 0.5149),
    focal_point=(-0.01475, -0.02571, 0.07194),
    viewup=(-0.2602, -0.2604, 0.9298),
)

pl.show(auto_close=False)

# Programmatically pick a face to make example look nice
try:
    width, height = pl.window_size
    pl.iren._mouse_right_button_press(480, 300)
    pl.iren._mouse_right_button_release()
except AttributeError:
    # ignore this section when manually closing the window
    pass

Static Scene

Interactive Scene

/home/runner/_work/pyvista/pyvista/examples/02-plot/element_picking.py:75: UserWarning: Encountered issue in callback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/runner/_work/pyvista/pyvista/.tox/docs-build/lib/python3.14/site-packages/pyvista/plotting/picking.py", line 268, in __call__
    picked = self.get_edge(picked_point)
  File "/home/runner/_work/pyvista/pyvista/.tox/docs-build/lib/python3.14/site-packages/pyvista/plotting/picking.py", line 219, in get_edge
    cell = self.get_cell(picked_point).get_cell(0)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'get_cell'
  pl.iren._mouse_right_button_press(480, 300)

Tags: plot