Visualization of large data sets by mixing Tcl and C++ interfaces to the VTK library

This article describes a technique to build applications for the visualization of large data sets using VTK library and components written in Tcl and C++. VTK is a software system for computer graphics, visualization and image processing. VTK library is written in C++ however it provides interfaces to the scripting languages Tcl, Python and Java. Though it is possible to write a whole VTK application in a scripting language like Tcl, it is more suitable, for efficiency reasons, to implement some functionality in a compiled language like C/C++ for instance. This article presents in through details how to access VTK objects from different languages and how to mix Tcl and C++ components in one application.