title: When/where are global element ID's assigned when creating parts using Exodus?
body: <p>I have a finite element part, made up of hexahedrals. I am writing it out to an Exodus file format so it can be viewed in Paraview.</p>
  <p>Basic things like the name of the part and connectivities of the elements and areas of their faces works fine. For example, to write out the name, I can do:</p>
  <pre><code>ex_put_name( fileId, EX_ELEM_BLOCK, blockIndex, name.data() )
  </code></pre>
  <p>Where name is some <code>std::string</code>.</p>
  <p>However, I am running into an issue with the Global Element IDs variable. This seems to be automatically created by Exodus on creation of the part.</p>
  <p>Is there some way to modify these global element ID's?</p>
  <p>OR, is there some way to incrementally add elements to the file, rather than in blocks?</p>
  <p>Sometimes the blocks aren't contiguous, and thus the global element ID's no longer line up with the original mesh's IDs.</p>
  <p>Example. Here is a mesh colored by global element ID with values I expect:</p>
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/eIqOK.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/eIqOK.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
  <p>And here is that same mesh, but with blocks that are not contiguous. The global element IDs are no longer correct!</p>
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/wJRqe.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/wJRqe.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
  <p>I could just add another variable which really is the global element IDs, and call it &quot;Real Global Element IDs&quot; or something, but that's really kludgy. Or make every single element into its own block, but that's also awful.</p>
  <p>Note: I would add the tag &quot;ExodusII&quot; since that's really what I'm asking about, but lack the reputation. Sorry for any confusion.</p>