Visualizations

Visualizations with Rocketeer

Prerequsites on Linux

Rocketeer needs:

• libstdc++.so.5 (compat rpm’s)
• libGLU.so.1 (rpm)
  

Description of Rocketeer

All data sets

• Times, Blocks
• Coordinates/Ranges
• Nodes/elements
• Variables/Ranges
  • Scalars, Vectors, Tensors

Mesh

• Blocks by color

Quality Metrics

• Min/Max angle
• Size, Skewness, etc.

Also contains the surface plots

Glyphs

• Particles
• Vector fields

Isosurfaces 3-D mesh plots Opacity controls

• Constant
• Value-dependent

Thresholds Animation

• Output series
• Moving camera

Stand-alone, client/server, and batch versions

Using Rocketeer

Open Rocketeer on Windows by double-clicking icon

Select Data to Display

Choose File->Select Data Files…

Data Selection Dialog

Data Display

Selecting Variables to Visualize

Activating Display

Moving the Image With the Mouse

• Left button – free rotate
• Ctrl-Left Button – Rotate in plane of screen
• Right button hold/move up: larger image
• Right button hold/move down: smaller image
• Center button: translate in plane of screen
• Note: There is no “return to default” command

Change How Mesh Displays

Edit Surface/Grid Dialog

Add a New Timestep

Displaying Different Times

Displaying Different Variables

Click on Mesh icon in Variable area. & Choose Visualize->Remove Surface/Grid & Click on pf variable (pressure) & Choose Visualize->Add Surface/Grid & Then click Renderer: On button

Add Colorbar

Clipping Planes

Set Clipping Plane

Add Display Elements

Add a Second Variable

Edit Glyphs

Opacity

Final Display

Displaying translucent pressure, isosurfaces, and velocity glyphs.

Save Images and Movies

Further Capabilities of Rocketeer

• Ability to use multiple materials (fluid and solid, surface)
• Enable block Selection and movie Fly-throughs
• Visualize slices and bounding boxes

Loading Rocstar Files into Tecplot

HDF4 to Tecplot Conversion Utility

HDF4 to Tecplot conversion utility: <build>/bin/hdf2plt
Usage: hdf2plt –regex “hdf files to convert ” –o <filename>.dat
Available command line flags for hdf2plt:

• - -regex "{somestring}*.hdf": specifies a set of hdf files
• -g: enables ghost node inclusion in the output file
• -o {outputfile} : Specifies output file. Output is printed to STDOUT by default

Rocstar Partitions to Tecplot

Information on grid partitioning

• Rocstar partitions grids with M original blocks into N sub-blocks for running on N processors (N >= M)
• Rocstar solution files are written by partitioned block, with each block represented by a separate .hdf file
• An N-processor run will produce N .hdf files
• Each hdf file will be translated to separate zone of the single Tecplot file produced by hdf2plt
• Note: The University of Illinois version of hdf2plt will produce discontinuous zone boundaries when visualized in Tecplot
  • New version under production

Preplot and Load Solution Files

Preplot (Tecplot utility)

• hdf2plt writes an ascii Tecplot file that can be quite large (many Gb)
• Converting this file into Tecplot’s binary format (appended with .plt) saves time transferring and loading solution files
• Preplot is a Tecplot utility for performing this conversion. It is included in a standard Tecplot installation and can be distributed freely
• Usage: $ preplot <filename>.dat
• Generates: <filename>.plt

Loading fluid solution file into Tecplot

• After conversion, the .dat or .plt solution file can be loaded by the standard Tecplot data loader:
• File->Load Data Files -> Tecplot Data Loader

Probe files

• The probe text files are not covered by an existing utility
• They can be loaded into Tecplot, Excel, etc. using the General Text Loader

Rocstar Data Visualization in Tecplot

All of Tecplot’s visualization and analysis tools can now be applied to the Rocstar simulation
Allows deriving new variables, etc. that Rocketeer does not do

These sections are adapted from the Rocketeer and Visualization powerpoints respectively.