1. Visualization Tools for Nuclear Engineering Data Tom Fogal May 3 rd, 2011

2. Why Do We Visualize Data? ● 3 ways visualization is used / use cases – Exploration ● “We are trying to learn...” – Confirmation ● “We want to make sure that...” – Communication ● “We want to show our colleagues...”

3. Analysis is Important too! ● This is where the science happens! – (V&A is about more than pretty pictures) – Dearth of effective analysis tools – But, we do have some tools to do this! ● Infrastructure for large data ● Variety of file formats ● Routines for data query ● “Exploration, Confirmation, Communication” applies to analysis too

4. Available Tools ● VisIt ● ParaView ● ImageVis3D (Mobile) ● Gnuplot/Octave/Matlab ● Ensight ● VisTrails ● SCIRun ● VTK

5. Available Tools ● VisIt ● ParaView ● ImageVis3D (Mobile) ● Gnuplot/Octave/Matlab ● Ensight ● VisTrails ● SCIRun ● VTK

6. ImageVis3D ● Open source system for visualization of extremely large data on commodity workstations ● Very easy to use ● Incredibly simple to import gridded data ● Mobile! ● But: only for scalar fields and mesh data

7. ● Volume renderings of scalar fields ● “ClearView” mode for simple operation ● Useful when interesting data are contained within larger structures which are also interesting ImageVis3D: Scalar Visualization

8. ● Volume renderings of scalar fields ● “ClearView” mode for simple operation ● Useful when interesting data are contained within larger structures which are also interesting ImageVis3D: Scalar Visualization

9. ImageVis3D Mobile

10. ● “How did I generate that image?” ● “What filtering routines are necessary for these data?”

11. VisIt ● VisIt is an open source, end user visualization and analysis tool for simulated and experimental data – Used by: physicists, engineers, code developers, vis experts – > 100k downloads via web ● R&D 100 award in 2005 ● Used very heavily on DoE supercomputers

12. VisIt: Analysis

13. VisIt: “End User” Product ● Manuals – 300 page user manual – 200 page command line reference manual – Data import manual ● Wiki for users (&& developers) ● Executables for all major platforms ● Day long class, complete with exercises

14. VisIt: Discovery, Confirmation, Communication Discovery Communication Confirmation for i in range(numSlices): SetSlice(i) CalculateStatistics() CompareSlice()

15. ParaView ● End user application, started in 1999 ● Developed by Kitware, Sandia, Los Alamos ● Adds GUI and Parallel backend to VTK

16. Summary ● ImageVis3D: easy data visualization ● VisIt, ParaView, Ensight for more complex visualization and analysis – … but use VisIt! ● VisTrails for provenance and workflow communication ● … and simple plotting tools still work for those quick-and- dirty needs ● Future: analysis performed prior to vis!