pls disregard previous one Hi! I have a question about VecLoad. In my program, I need to read in ordered data from an input file, which in an ordinary c program would be as: for (k=0; ky->z,ie p(x0,y0,z0),p(x1,y0,z0),...,p(x0,y1,z0),p(x1,y1,z0),...*/ fscanf(fp,"%f %f %f %f\n",&dumx,&dumy,&dumz,&var); i++; idx=i; AOApplicationToPetsc(ao,1,&idx); VecSetValue(v0,idx,var,INSERT_VALUES); } then use VecView to output the binary file: PetscViewerBinaryOpen(PETSC_COMM_SELF,"out.dat",FILE_MODE_WRITE,&viewer); VecView(v0,viewer); Please let me know if something is wrong. Many thanks! JB