ParaView

Infobox Software
name = ParaView



caption =
author =
developer = Sandia National Labs, Kitware Inc, Los Alamos National Labs.
released =
latest release version = 3.2.1
latest release date =
operating system = Unix/Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows
genre = Scientific visualization, Interactive visualization
license = BSD
website = [http://www.paraview.org/ www.paraview.org]

ParaView is an open source, freely available program for parallel, interactive, scientific visualization. It has a client-server architecture to facilitate remote visualization of datasets, and generates level of detail (LOD) models to maintain interactive framerates for large datasets. It is an application built on top of the Visualization Tool Kit (VTK) libraries. Where VTK is a set of libraries that provide visualization services for data, task, and pipeline parallelism, ParaView is an application designed for data parallelism on shared-memory or distributed-memory multicomputers and clusters. It can also be run as a single-computer application.

Features

ParaView can perform parallel rendering, although for small datasets it transfers data to the client for rendering by default. ParaView provides many tools for scientific visualization but the most commonly-used are
* isocontouring: finding curves or surfaces in space where a function takes on a single value,
* clipping: removing some spatial region from a dataset,
* cutting: intersecting a dataset with another (usually lower-dimensional) curve or surface,
* volume rendering: drawing a scalar function defined over a volumetric region of space with some translucent appearance so that the interior of the dataset can be observed,
* thresholding: removing some region of a dataset based on the value of a function defined over space,
* Subsetting: removing data to reduce its size with minimal impact on its visual appearance (this is most commonly used for structured grids), and
* picking: selecting a single point or cell in order to inspect function values associated with it.

Although it was initially intended mainly for use with unstructured grids, ParaView can represent data in structured grids.

ParaView in Use

* ParaView was used by Sandia National Laboratories, to visualize a 473 million triangle isosurface, a record dataset size at the time, generated from a Richtmyer-Meshkov simulation on a 128 node cluster [http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/344] .
* In 2005 Sandia National Laboratories, NVidia and Kitware had multiple press releases on the scalable visualization and rendering work done on ParaView. The releases announced breakthroughs in scalable performance attaining rendering rates of over 8 billion polygons per second using ParaView. [ [http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_27539.html Press Release ] ] . [ [http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_19962.html Press Release ] ] .
* ParaView is used as the visualization platform for the Modeling software OpenFOAM [ [http://www.opencfd.co.uk/openfoam/doc/userse26.html 7.1 paraFoam ] ]
* The Swiss National Supercomputing Center uses ParaView for visualizing the outcome of physical simulations [http://www.cscs.ch/a-display.php?id=1168] .
* The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) uses ParaView for visualizing fluid-dynamics simulations [ [http://lmhwww.epfl.ch/Facilities/WEB_VISUALISATION/LMH_Visu.html EPFL-LMH Visualization ] ] [ [http://simx.epfl.ch/simx/en/paraview_pc.html Logiciel ParaView pour PC ] ] [ [http://pleiades.epfl.ch/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=49&Itemid=53 Pleiades Cluster - ParaView Visualization Software ] ] .
* Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulation Data visualized with ParaView presented at the TeraGrid 2008 conference. [ [http://www.teragrid.org/userinfo/data/vis/vis_gallery.php TeraGrid [ User Info: Data: Visualization: Gallery ] ] .
* Tutorial on how to use ParaView on the University of California Argonne servers. One of the TeraGrid resource sites funded by NSF [ [http://www.teragrid.org/userinfo/data/vis/pv_overview.php TeraGrid [ User Info: Data: Visualization: ParaView Overview ] ] [ [http://www.uc.teragrid.org/tg-docs/ UofC/ANL TeraGrid Resources ] ]
* Computational Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) [ [http://supercomputing.iu.edu/sc2005/applications/physical/paraview_visl.php Indiana University: SuperComputing 2005 ] ] [ [http://www.engr.iupui.edu/me/newmerl/cfdl_mission.htm Computational Fluid Dynamics Laboratory - Mission & Overview ] ] [ [http://supercomputing.iu.edu/sc2006/posters/applications/physical/paraview_visl.php Indiana University: SuperComputing 2006 ] ]
* Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Visualization Group [ [http://www-vis.lbl.gov/NERSC/Software/paraview/ Information about ParaView at NERSC ] ]
* Arctic Region Supercomputing Center [ [http://www.arsc.edu/support/training/Viztraining2007.html ARSC 2007 ParaView and ezVIZ Workshops ] ]
* San Diego Supercomputing Center [ [http://www.sdsc.edu/us/newsletter/common/newsletter.php?issue=2006-07&corner=vis SDSC Thread: SDSC User Support Newsletter (Issue 2006-07, Visualization ) ] ]
* University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill course on Visualization on the Sciences [ [http://cs.unc.edu/~taylorr/Comp715/ Comp/Phys/Mtsc 715, Visualization in the Sciences ] ]
* Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center uses ParaView for visualizing the output of the [http://mfix.org/ MFIX] (Multiphase Flow with Interphase eXchanges) simulation program [ [http://www.psc.edu/general/software/packages/mfix/MFIXScalarsGuide.html Using ParaView to Visualize MFIX Scalar Variables ] ] [ [http://www.psc.edu/general/software/packages/mfix/MFIXVectorsGuide.html Using ParaView to Visualize MFIX Vector Variables ] ] . It also provides a ParaView Tutorial [ [http://www.psc.edu/general/software/packages/paraview/tutorial/ ParaView Tutorial ] ]
* Army Research Laboratory uses ParaView to Visualize CTH Data [ [http://www.arl.hpc.mil/SciVis/paraview.html ARL MSRC Sci-Vis: Using ParaView to Visualize CTH Data ] ] [ [http://www.arl.hpc.mil/Publications/eLink_Fall05/clarke.html ARL MSRC eLink Fall 2005: What's all this Large Data Visualization Stuff Anyhow? ] ]
* [https://visualization.hpc.mil/ Data Analysis and Assessment Center] of the Department of Defense High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) [ [https://visualization.hpc.mil/wiki/Application_List DAAC Supported Software List] ]
* The [http://www.nccs.gov/about/ National Center for Computational Sciences] at Oak Ridge National Laboratory uses ParaView for visualizing large datasets. [ [http://www.nccs.gov/user-support/general-support/software/paraview/ National Center for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory – ParaView software] ]

References

External links

* [https://visualization.hpc.mil/wiki/index.php/ParaView ParaView Tutorials]
* [http://stroke.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/38/9/2500 ParaView used for modeling brain blood circulation]
* [http://gcmd.gsfc.nasa.gov/KeywordSearch/Metadata.do?Portal=GCMD_Services&KeywordPath=%5BService_Provider%3A+Short_Name%3D%27KWI%27%5D&NumericId=1940&MetadataView=Full&MetadataType=1&lbnode=gcmd3b ParaView Entry at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center data services page]
* [http://docs.hp.com/en/A-SVAUG-2A/ch05s02.html ParaView used in the HP Scalable Visualization Array]
* [http://www.flickr.com/photos/kitware/sets/72157603966390403/ Flickr page of Paraview visualizations]