catalyst: vector variables have extraneous '_' appended in coprocessing script output
This issue was created automatically from an original Mantis Issue. Further discussion may take place here.
The basic problem here is as follows. To create a coprocessing visualization script with Catalyst, you are using the coprocessing plugin. The data item in question is a vector variable, such as displacement. You create the coprocessing script by loading an exodus file which is a stand-in for the data which will be generated during the simulation.
So: you bring up paraview, load the coprocessing plugin, and load the stand-in exodus data. You make a simple view which involves the vector variable (e.g. color by the displacement accepting the default use of the vector magnitude for the coloring value). Then dump out a script using the coprocessing plugin.
The script will not work properly during coprocessing visualization. The reason is that a '' has been appended the the variable name during the process (e.g. the variable is 'displ' but comes out in the script as 'displ').
A workaround is available, which is to go through the python script and change all the offending strings by removing the '' (e.g. 'displ' to 'displ'). However, given the already high bar of using paraview to generate the script, having to go and edit the python before use is a bridge too far for almost any user.
This appears to be somewhat related to to exodus reader. I think (but I'm not exactly sure how it works) that the data in the exodus file actually appears as three separate variables, one for each vector component (e.g. displ_x, displ_y, displ_z). The exodus reader combines these into a single vector variable with a given name (displ_).
I'm not precisely sure of a solution here. Perhaps the thing to do is to allow some automatic editing of the variable names either at exodus read time or coprocessing script write-out time (e.g. optionally remove a trailing '_' from vector names in the coprocessing script output).