Skip to main content

Notice: this Wiki will be going read only early in 2024 and edits will no longer be possible. Please see: https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/wikis/Wiki-shutdown-plan for the plan.

Jump to: navigation, search

Visualizing Output with ICE

Revision as of 09:58, 26 January 2017 by Crawfordst.ornl.gov (Talk | contribs) (Using ParaView)

Currently, ICE features three plugins for visualizing and plotting simulation output data:

  • VisIt Tools - An interactive 3-D visualization tool for rendering meshes, scalar plots, contour plots, and more.
  • ParaView Tools - Another interactive 3-D visualization tool offered as an alternative to VisIt.
  • CSV Plotting Tools - A customizable 2-D data plotting utility for .csv data files.

ICE's VisIt tool for 3D visualzation ICE's CSV plotter for 2D graphing

Prerequisites

VisIt

To use the VisIt tools, ICE requires the installation of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's VisIt software (version 2.8.2 to 2.9.2) either locally or on a remote machine.

The VisIt website offers example data files that you can use to familiarize yourself with the VisIt tools.

ParaView

Using the ParaView tools requires an installation of Kitware's ParaView (version 5.0 or newer) on a Linux or Mac OS X machine.

CSV Plotting Tools

The CSV plotting tools are built into ICE and require no additional software to be installed.

Visualizing Output

Configuring Project Explorer

ICE's "Project Explorer" view allows the user to import data files and launch a visualization session. Currently, ICE supports VisIt, ParaView, and .csv data files. VisIt and ParaView applications are called directly from ICE, and the .csv visualization engine is built into ICE with no need for third-party software.

Opening the Project Explorer View

Within ICE, the user will need to have the "Project Explorer" view open. If this view is not yet part of your workflow, use the the main menu bar at the top of the window and navigate to:

Window > Show View > Other

In the resulting "Show View" dialog, select:

General > Project Explorer and click OK.

Show view project explorer stc.png

Creating a Project

Create project one stc.png

Create project two stc.png

Adding the Data File

The latest versions of ICE make adding the data file to your project a very simple affair.

First, within the "Project Explorer" view, select the project that you would like to associate with the file you are about to import. In this example, we're looking at "Project 1."

Select project ICE stc.png

Next, simply click the Import button in ICE's main toolbar.

Import file ICE stc.png

This will present a file import dialog where the user can navigate to the desired data file. Once found, select the file, and click Open.

Import dialog ICE stc.png

The data file should now appear in the "Project Explorer View," nested under your project ("Project 1" in this tutorial).

Data file in project ICE stc.png

The visualizations for these data files are launched directly from the "Project Explorer" view. For .csv files, you can simply double click their listing in the "Project Explorer" view to open them.

Similarly, VisIt and ParaView files can be opened by double clicking, but you must first establish a connection to the VisIt or ParaView application.

Using VisIt

Configuring the VisIt Connection

Creating a default VisIt connection will enable ICE to automatically connect to VisIt at launch. To start:

  • Windows or Linux: in ICE's toolbar, select Window > Preferences, then Visualization > VisIt in the tree of the "Preferences" page.
  • Mac OS X: in ICE's toolbar, select ICE > Preferences, then Visualization > VisIt in the tree of the "Preferences" page.

Press the new row button (stylized as a "+" symbol) in the upper-right corner of the resulting dialog box.

VisItPreferencePage ICE.png

The default values supplied automatically by ICE should be fine for most users. However, two fields may need to be changed to accommodate a user's configuration, and you can click on each cell to edit the parameter.

  • Host: The default value for this field is "localhost," which is used for connecting to a local installation of VisIt on a user's machine. To launch a remote VisIt connection, the remote hostname/address should be entered into this field.
  • Path: If correctly installed, the VisIt path should populate in ICE by default. If not, the user should add the full path to the local VisIt installation. The path should end with the folder containing the VisIt executable.
    • On a Windows machine with VisIt installed in the default location, the path would be:
      • C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Local\Programs\LLNL\VisIt 2.9.2\
    • On a Linux machine, the path will be based on where you extracted the  visit2_9_2.linux-x86  folder, ending with  ~/visit2_9_2.linux-x86_64/bin. For example, if unzipped to the desktop, it would be:
      • /home/[UserName]/Desktop/visit2_9_2.linux-x86_64/bin/
    • On Mac OS X, VisIt should be installed in the machine's "Applications" directory, unless otherwise specified by the user.
      • /Applications/VisIt.app/Contents/Resources/bin/

Once finished, press Apply, then OK. ICE will then open VisIt and connect to it.

Visit connection apply stc.png

If you are connecting to a remote host, you may be prompted to "allow" the connection to the remote host. Click Yes to trust the connection, and enter the credentials for the remote machine in the prompt.

Executing Python Commands

While many of VisIt's features are already accessible in ICE, work to enable a more robust feature set is on-going. In the meantime, features not yet integrated into ICE can still be accessed via Python commands by clicking the Python script button located in the VisIt Plot Viewer.

ICE VisItPythonScriptButton.png

Writing Python scripts for VisIt is beyond the scope of this tutorial. However, you are welcome to refer to the VisIt Python Interface Manual provided by the VisIt development team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

VisIt Plot Editor

Once a connection with VisIt has been established, the "Plot Editor" view will appear and display the contents of the file that was imported into "Project 1." This view allows the user to manipulate the visualization just as they would with the VisIt GUI.

If at any point you should close the "Plot Editor," simply double click on the imported file to redraw the visualization.

Visit visualizer ICE stc.png

A VisIt plot editor will allow you to choose the mesh and scalar to be modeled and to choose the model's representation. These editors also feature a slider at the bottom, allowing the user to interact with time data.

TimeSliderWidget ICE.png

The arrow buttons move to the previous or next time step, and the triangle button enables the "Plot Editor" to play the simulation automatically. The last button on the right displays playback options.

The visualization's current time step is also displayed, and you can manually drag the slider along the timeline to choose a specific time step to display.

Using ParaView

Configuring the ParaView Connection

As with VisIt, creating a default ParaView connection will enable ICE to automatically connect to ParaView at launch. To start:

  • Windows or Linux: in ICE's toolbar, select Window > Preferences, then Visualization > ParaView in the tree of the "Preferences" page.
  • Mac OS X: in ICE's toolbar, select ICE > Preferences, then Visualization > ParaView in the tree of the "Preferences" page.

Press the new row button (stylized as a "+" symbol) in the upper-right corner of the resulting dialog box.

Add para connection stc.png

The default values supplied automatically by ICE should be fine for most users. However, some fields may need to be changed to accommodate a user's configuration, and you can click on each cell to edit the parameter.

  • Host: The default value for this field is "localhost," which is used for connecting to a local installation of ParaView on a user's machine; keep this setting if you are running ParaView on the same machine as the ICE framework. To launch a remote ParaView connection, the remote hostname/address should be entered into this field.
  • Path: If correctly installed, the ParaView path should populate in ICE by default. If not, the user should add the full path to the local ParaView installation. The path should end with the folder containing the ParaView executable.
    • On a Windows machine, the path will be based on where you extracted the contents of the  ParaView-5.2.0-Qt4-OpenGL2-Windows-64bit.zip  archive. For example, if you unzipped to the desktop without renaming the archive, the path would be:
      • C:\Users\[UserName]\Desktop\ParaView-5.2.0-Qt4-OpenGL2-Windows-64bit\
    • On a Linux machine, the path will be based on where you extracted the contents of the  ParaView-5.2.0-Qt4-OpenGL2-MPI-Linux-64bit.tar.gz  archive. For example, if you unzipped to the desktop without renaming the archive, the path would be:
      • /home/[UserName]/Desktop/ParaView-5.2.0-Qt4-OpenGL2-MPI-Linux-64bit/
    • On Mac OS X, ParaView's executable should be installed in the machine's "Applications" directory, unless otherwise specified by the user. Therefore, the path would simply be:
      • /Applications/
  • Server Script Path: The full path to the  http_pvw_server.py  file, ending with the folder containing it. For example, if the file is on your desktop, the path might be (for Linux): /home/[UserName]/Desktop/.
  • Visualizer Port: Port number for the ParaView web visualizer. The default number (9601) should work but can be changed if needed. If changed, it must differ from the ParaView port number (9600).
  • Remote OS: The operating system of the remote machine on which ParaView will be launched. If you are launching ParaView on your local machine, ignore this cell.
  • Remote ParaView Version Number: The version of ParaView you are using. This may be ignored unless you are launching a remote ParaView session on a Linux machine. You can check your installation's version number by looking inside the top level  lib  directory. The  lib  directory should contain a folder named  paraview-  followed by the version number.

Once finished, click Apply, and then click OK. ICE will open ParaView and connect to it.

Para connection apply stc.png

If you are connecting to a remote host, you may be prompted to "allow" the connection to the remote host. Click Yes to trust the connection, and enter the credentials for the remote machine in the prompt.

Plot Editors

Once a connection with ParaView has been established, the "Plot Editor" view will appear and display the contents of the file that was imported into "Project 1." This view allows the user to manipulate the visualization just as they would with the ParaView GUI.

If at any point you should close the "Plot Editor," simply double click on the imported file to redraw the visualization.

Visit visualizer ICE stc.png

A ParaView plot editor will allow you to choose the mesh and scalar to be modeled and to choose the model's representation. These editors also feature a slider at the bottom, allowing the user to interact with time data.

TimeSliderWidget ICE.png

The arrow buttons move to the previous or next time step, and the triangle button enables the "Plot Editor" to play the simulation automatically. The last button on the right displays playback options.

The visualization's current time step is also displayed, and you can manually drag the slider along the timeline to choose a specific time step to display.

The ParaView plot editor also has a Launch in Web Visualizer button to open the file in ParaView's Web Visualizer inside of ICE. The full functionality of the Web Visualizer is beyond the scope of this article, but interested readers can learn more from the official documentation.

CSV Plot Viewer

ICE includes, out of the box, basic CSV data plotting utilities for fast and easy x/y graph visualizations. This section describes how to open your CSV data using the Plot Editor in the Visualization Perspective.

Adding/Removing Files

To open a file, find the green "+" icon in the Visualization File Viewer. Clicking directly on the green "+" icon will prompt a local file browser to pop up. You can also access this option by clicking on the drop-down button next to the green "+" icon.

ICE VisItAddFileButton.png

This will offer you four ways to open file(s):

  • Open a local file
  • Open a remote file
  • Open a local file set
  • Open a local SILO set
Note.png
ICE's CSV Plot Viewer can only open local files, so when opening CSV files for plotting, you need only click the green "+" button to select and add local files.


Once you have selected your file(s), they should appear in the Visualization File Viewer.

Lastly, if you would like to remove a file from the Visualization File Viewer list, select it, and click the red "X" button.

Alternatively, you may open .csv files directly through the Project Explorer. This may be done by clicking Window -> Show View -> Other... and selecting Project Explorer. Within the Project Explorer, right click and click Import...

ICE CSV Plot Editor Import File1.png

In the pop-up window, select General -> File System as shown above, then click next

ICE CSV Plot Editor Import File2.png

Select the directory housing the data you wish to visualize in the From Directory field, then select which sub-directories and/or files you wish to import in the two boxes below it. Select the folder to import the files into in the Into folder field and click Next. The files will appear within the selected folder in the Project Explorer, and can be opened by double clicking them or right clicking and selecting Open With -> PlotEditor.

Note.png
The CSV Plot Viewer requires data to be in an [m x n] format, meaning that files that contain rows with empty values cannot be plotted. Furthermore, the first row is expected to include column headers—the variable names—while each subsequent row should include the numerical data in columns.



Selecting Series

By default, the first series in the file will be used as the independent variable while the second is graphed as a dependent variable. These can both be changed.

To set the independent series, which is used to determine the x-axis values of all points, right click in the Plot Editor and select Set independent series..., which will open a new window. Select the series you want and click the OK button.

There are two ways to select the graphed series. The Select series... button in the upper left corner will allow you to select a single series to graph, removing all others. You may graph multiple series by right clicking in the Plot Editor and clicking Select series.... You may then choose which series to graph by clicking the check boxes in the new window and clicking the OK button. Finally, you may remove all graphed series by right clicking and choosing Remove all series.

Plot Toolbar

The plotting widget used by ICE's CSV Plot Editor includes a toolbar with helpful utilities for navigating your plotted data or customizing the plot's appearance. You can hover the mouse cursor over each button to view a tool tip describing what the button does.

Clicking the first button will open a dialog that allows you to customize the appearance of the plot or individual series on the plot, including titles, scales, grids, colors, and fonts. The last button allows you to save the current appearance of the plot to a .png image file. Feel free to try out the different utilities available in this toolbar.

Back to the top