[Back] [Up] [Next]

## Overview

VisIt is a free, open source, platform independent, distributed, parallel, visualization tool for visualizing data defined on two- and three-dimensional structured and unstructured meshes. VisIt's distributed architecture allows it to leverage both the compute power of a large parallel computer and the graphics acceleration hardware of a local workstation. VisIt's user interface is often run locally on a Windows, Linux, or MacOS X desktop computer while its compute engine component runs in parallel on a remote computer. VisIt's distributed architecture allows VisIt to visualize simulation data where it was generated, eliminating the need to move the data to a visualization server. VisIt can be controlled by its Graphical User Interface (GUI), through the Python and Java programming languages, or from a custom user interface that you develop yourself. More information about VisIt can be found online at https://wci.llnl.gov/codes/visit/.

This manual explains how to use the VisIt GUI. You will be given a brief overview on how VisIt works and then you will be shown how to start and use VisIt.