[flotus1]

I am having second thoughts on my current implementation of ensight gold result files.
The constraints are rather simple: I have a single geometry which does not change over time, i.e. the geometry.geo file only contains one entry. And I have several data files (only one in this example) with values that do change over time, i.e. one entry for each time step.
This is what my case file looks like:

FORMAT
type: ensight gold

GEOMETRY
model:   0   1 geometry.geo

VARIABLE
scalar per element:         1       1 pressure pressure.scl

TIME
time set:            1
number of steps:         10
time values:
         0.0
         0.1
         0.2
         0.3
         0.4
         0.5
         0.6
         0.7
         0.8
         0.9

FILE
file set:            1
number of steps:         10

First things first: it works. I can also run Paraview in MPI mode and switch around between time steps.
What I am not sure about: is this the "right" way to do it with my constraints? (static geometry with time-dependent values)
Particularly with respect to performance. When running PV single-core, switching between time steps takes some time. Some of it is surely taken up by reading the new result values. But I am not 100% sure if PV assumes that the geometry also changes over time, and reconstructs it for every new time step. Which would be unnecessary in my case. The progress bar for "GeometryRepresentationWithFaces" takes longest when switching between time steps.
Could anyone share some insight into this? The ensight manual is not particularly helpful here, at least not for me.

Edit: Just tried some things...
1) Writing one geometry representation per time step to the geo file, and changing the case file accordingly. Switching between time steps takes just as long as it did with a single geometry representation. So I guess PV rebuilds the geometry every time step, even with a constant geometry???
2) Instead of showing the whole model with a surface representation, just show a slice through the geometry. Switching between time steps is much faster now.
3) Enabling geometry buffer in PV with a large enough buffer size to fit everything. After switching through all time steps once, the second time cycling through them is sped up immensely.
So is this a Paraview thing? Rebuilding the entire geometry representation for every time step, even though the geometry does not change. I'm confused.

[flotus1]

To wrap this up:
I found out that I wasn't doing it wrong. Instead, ParaView treats all meshes as non-static by default.
Yet there is a dim light at the end of the tunnel: https://blog.kitware.com/staticmeshplugin/