SOLPATHS(1) General Commands Manual SOLPATHS(1)

solpaths — convert Solstice radiative paths to VTK files

solpaths [file]

solpaths reads the radiative paths dumped by solstice(1) when invoked with the -p option, from file or from standard input whether a filename is provided as an argument or not, respectively. For each simulated sun direction, it generates a VTK file of the radiative paths, that can be visualised and analysed in a data visualisation tool such as ParaView.

The naming scheme for the output files depends on the way the sun direction was provided to solstice(1):

  • using the -D azimuth,elevation flag: the output file is named after the following pattern: 
    printf "%g-%g-paths.vtk" azimuth elevation
  • using the -L latitude,longitude and -T time flags: the output file is named after the following pattern: 
    printf "%g-%g-%s-paths.vtk" latitude longitude time

The solpaths utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

Pipe solstice(1) with solpaths to extract the radiative paths for each provided sun direction:

solstice -n100 -D45,70 -D50,75 -R rcvs.yaml -p default input.yaml | solpaths

First, invoke solstice(1) to write the results to output, then run solpaths on this file to extract the radiative paths for the provided sun direction:

solstice -L3,40 -T"2026-08-15T17:20:00" -R rcvs.yaml -p default -o output input.yaml
solpaths output

solmaps(1), solpp(1), solppraw(1), solstice(1), solstice-output(5)

solpaths was initially developed with funding from the (Laboratory of Excellence), in collaboration with the PROMES Laboratory of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). Starting in 2026, a new development effort funded by Ademe is ongoing.

solpaths was written and is maintained by |Méso|Star> <contact@meso-star.com>.

August 17, 2026 UNIX