ParaView (ParaView Website) is an open-source application for visualizing two- and three-dimensional data sets. It is a multi-platform parallel data analysis and visualization application built upon the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) library. It can process very large data sets in parallel and later collect the results using a parallel machine. It helps in visualizing simulation results from simulations run on supercomputing resources that are often too big for a single desktop machine to handle. To enable interactive visualization of such datasets, it uses remote and/or parallel data processing. The basic concept is that if a dataset cannot fit on a desktop machine due to memory or other limitations, we can split the dataset among a cluster of machines, driven from the desktop.

Steps to Run ParaView GUI From The Terminal

1. Login to the Arc system on the terminal using the sample command shown below:

 $ ssh -X username@arc.utsa.edu

2. Run the command below to login onto a compute node:

$ srun --x11 -p compute1 -t 8:00:00 -n 1 -N 1 --pty bash

3. Run the commands below:

$ ml paraview
$ paraview --mesa

After running these commands, the GUI window for the ParaView will pop up.

**Note: - Due to the hardware settings, --mesa must be included in the command line in order to launch Paraview GUI

**Note(Mac Users): - Mac users will have to download and install Xquartz for launching GUI-based applications on remote Linux systems.

**Note(Windows Users): -Windows users will have to download and install Xming/Mobaxterm for launching GUI-based applications on remote Linux systems.

Cylinder Visualization Example

1. Copy the data files to your working directory from the ParaView example directory:

 $ cp -r /apps/paraview/examples/ .

2. After the ParaView GUI application is launched, open disk_out_ref.ex2, and click Apply. This file will display a cylinder in 3-D view as shown below:

Contour In Rectangle Visualization Example

1. Open the file rect_grid2.vtk from the data directory, and click Apply.

1. This file will display a rectangle shown below:

2. Now, create a contour inside the rectangle. Click on Filters -> Common -> Contour. Now a countour1 will be created under the Pipeline Browser section.

3. After the contour1 is created, now go to Properties -> Isosurfaces. Remove the value in the “Values Range:” using the – (minus sign) adjacent to the section. Now, click on the scale-like button just below the – (minus sign). Click “ok” in the dialog box. Refer to below screenshot:

4. Go to Contour1 -> Properties -> Coloring -> vectors (from solid color). Use mouse to rotate the output and visualize the 3-D object.

References

• Visualization with ParaView: Texas Advanced Computing Center
• Purdue: Introduction to ParaView
• ParaView Reference Manual
• ParaView Tutorials
• Purdue Webinar Series