Turn off time in Exodus file with mode shapes
This issue was created automatically from an original Mantis Issue. Further discussion may take place here.
In Exodus files with mode shapes, the time steps do not really mean a sequence in time. Rather, each time step signifies a different mode shape. Animating over "time" in this case is meaningless.
In the case of mode shapes, it is non-intuitive and just plain wrong to report the time steps to the pipeline and allow the animation mechanism to step through them. Instead, there should be an option that make the exodus reader treat time steps as mode steps. When on, no time is reported to the pipeline and a GUI component in the object inspector allows the user to select the current mode shape (stored in a time value in the Exodus file).
It would be bonus if there was some way to automatically identify which Exodus files have mode shapes and set the default accordingly. I don't know if that is possible.
It would also be bonus if, when mode shapes was on, that time would be reported to the pipeline as a continuous range, and when animated would actually do the mode shape animation. That might solve a lot of the GUI issues we have with mode shape animation.