Installation instructions for VisIt ===================================== This document contains instructions for installing VisIt on both Unix and Windows systems. The Unix installation instructions are first followed by the Windows installation instructions. Unix: 1. Run the visit-install script to install visit. Note that it can create a new distribution directory or update an existing distribution. This is handled automatically. visit-install "version" "platform" "directory" where "version" will be 1.1.5 for the current distribution. "platform" will be one of the following: aix, irix6, linux, osf1, or sunos5 depending on the machine. The one you use should match the name of the accompanying distribution file. "directory" is the directory you wish to install visit into. If the directory doesn't exist the script will create it. For example visit-install 1.1.5 irix6 /usr/local/visit will install the irix6, 1.1.5 version of visit in the directory "/usr/local/visit". Note that you will need to have the file "visit1_1_5.irix6.tar.gz" present in the current directory for this to function properly. You can install multiple binaries into the same directory. For example, you could then execute visit-install -a 1.1.5 linux /usr/local/visit to add a linux, 1.1.5 version of visit to the same directory. 2. Add the bin directory below the installation directory (/usr/local/visit/bin in our example) to each user's search path. The best way to do this is to add it to the user's .cshrc file. The bin directory contains the visit script which starts VisIt. It can be run on many machines. The script determines the type of machine it is running on and starts the appropriate executable. If visit were installed in the directory "/usr/local/visit", then the following commands would set your search path appropriately. cd echo "set path = ($path /usr/local/visit/bin)" >> .cshrc This completes the installation process for VisIt. 3. If you are installing VisIt on a Linux system with an NVidia graphics card, we recommend using the NVidia 2960 driver unless you will be doing stereo rendering. If you will be doing stereo rendering then you must use the 3123 driver, although it has some bugs. Below are notes on the various NVidia Linux drivers. 2802 - Not recommended. It has a triangle shading bug. 2960 - Recommended. Doesn't support stereo rendering. 3123 - Recommended for stereo rendering. It may not render large numbers of polygons when using display lists. You can turn off display lists by bringing up the "Rendering options" window and deselecting the "Use display lists" toggle button. 4191 - Not recommended. VisIt either crashes your X server or puts up a visualization window that never gets refreshed. Windows: 1. Copy the file visit1.1.5.exe to your desktop. 2. Right click on the visit1.1.5.exe icon using your mouse and selecting "Extract to folder C:\...\Desktop\visit1.1.5" from the popup menu. A window will popup as the file is extracted into the directory. Once the process is complete a "visit1.1.5" directory icon should appear on your desktop. 3. Double click on the "visit1.1.5" directory icon bringing up a file system browsing window. 4. Double click on the SETUP icon with the computer display icon to run InstallShield. 5. Follow the directions provided by InstallShield.