VisIt 1.4.1 Release Notes

Welcome to VisIt's release notes page. This page describes the important enhancements and bug-fixes that were added to this release.

Features added in version 1.4.1

- VisIt now has a Scatter plot, which allows you to visualize multivariate data as a point mesh. The new plot allows you to use up to 4 input variables. Up to three of the input variables can be used for coordinates and one of the input variables can be used for colors. Each of the dimensions can be scaled independently or they can all be mapped into a unit cube. The Scatter plot provides a plot wizard to help you initialize the many input variables to the plot so it is easier to create and use the plot.
- VisIt can now read files written in the ASCII form of the TecPlot file format.
- Zooming in on 2D datasets now increases the size of the viewport, making it more square, until the zoomed rectangle takes up most of the vis window. This allows you to see more of the dataset as you zoom using the middle mouse button.
- VisIt's Volume plot now has a 3rd rendering mode that lets you do raycasting volume-rendering. The new raycasting volume-renderer even accepts geometry from other plots allowing you to show both surfaces and volume-rendered data.
- VisIt's Expressions window now has a new Insert variables button that lets you choose to insert variables from a list of available variables and expressions.
- VisIt's Pick window now has a Variables button that lets you select secondary variables from a list of variables for the current plot. There are also two new checkboxes that let you choose whether or not to display the reference pick letter in the picked plot, and whether or not the returned node/zone ids should be the global values as read from the file.
- Many of VisIt's plot and operator attributes windows that used a line edit control for entering a variable name have been improved so they use a variable menu. The variable menu allows you to select a variable from a list of variables for the active plot or the active source.
- VisIt's Streamline plot has been enhanced so it can integrate more smoothly and can create longer streamlines. The plot also can now color by vorticity magnitude in addition to coloring by speed and the plot can now be displayed using lines, tubes, or ribbons. Finally, the Streamline plot now works with VisIt's Point tool when you use the plot with a point streamline source.
- VisIt's Vector plot has been enhanced by adding Scale by magnitude and Auto scale options. When Scale by magnitude is on, the size of the vectors depends on the magnitude of the vector. When Scale by magnitude is off, the vectors are all the same size. The default is on, which matches the previous behavior. When Auto scale is on, the size of the vectors is choosen so that they are a reasonable size. When Auto scale is off, the size of the vector is determined by the Scale. The default is on, which is different than the previous behavior.
- VisIt's Tensor plot has been enhanced by adding Scale by magnitude and Auto scale options. When Scale by magnitude is on, the size of the tensors depends on the magnitude of the tensor. When Scale by magnitude is off, the tensors are all the same size. The default is on, which matches the previous behavior. When Auto scale is on, the size of the tensors is choosen so that they are a reasonable size. When Auto scale is off, the size of the tensor is determined by the Scale. The default is on, which is different than the previous behavior.
- VisIt's 3D navigation mode now has a Dolly interaction mode that lets you move the camera toward the object. To enable Dolly mode, bring up the Interactors window and change the Navigation mode to Dolly. When in Dolly mode, the rotation interaction causes the view to rotate about the center of the object, the zoom interaction causes the camera to move toward the focus, and the pan interaction causes the camera and focus to move parallel to the image.
- VisIt's 3D navigation mode now has a Flythrough interaction mode that lets you move the camera through the dataset for genuine fly-throughs. To enable Flythrough mode, bring up the Interactors window and change the Navigation mode to Flythrough. When in Flythrough mode, the rotation interaction causes the view to rotate about the camera, the zoom interaction causes the camera and focus to move forward, and the pan interaction causes the camera and focus to move parallel to the image.
- Point mesh rendering has been improved so that it is much faster.
- VisIt can now read mixed variables from Flash files.
- VisIt now supports data from the CMAT file format.
- Changing the point size on a Mesh plot no longer causes a recalculation.
- Replacing a file now works harder to preserve the old SIL selection, if possible.
- The Replace button in VisIt's Main window is no longer grayed out when it should remain active.
- Opening Silo files is somewhat faster.
- VisIt's Save options window works better when clicking the Save button.
- VisIt now has the ability to pick on point meshes that have had glyphs applied.
- VisIt's Revolve operator is now built by default.
- Planes in the Clip operator attributes window are now grayed out if they are turned off.
- VisIt's visit -movie script can now save PNG image files.
- The Volume plot's opacities are now scaled so as to highlight high opacities and reduce the contribution of lower opacities.
- VisIt can now be built with xlC on AIX platforms.
- You can now run many of VisIt's tools using their name on the command line instead of typing: visit -command
- VisIt now provides version-specific VisIt scripts, which allow for better error checking and prevent the mixing of public and private versions.
- VisIt now allows for specifying a global node/zone id for the OnionPeel operator and the PickByZone, PickByNode, Zone Center and Node Coords queries. This option is accessed in the GUI by toggling the new checkbox in the Queries and OnionPeel windows.. In the CLI, the OnionPeel option is accessed via setting OnionPeelAttributes. For Pick: PickByGlobalZone(gzoneno), PickByGlobalNode(gnodeno). For Query: Query("Global Zone Center", gzoneid) and Query("Global Node Coords", gnodeid).
- VisIt can now generate curl, divergence, and the Laplacian through its expression language.
- VisIt now supports the Enzo file format for AMR grids.

Bugs fixed in version 1.4.1

- The CLI hangs after issuing the OpenComputeEngine command to open a compute engine on a remote computer.
- After opening a remote compute engine for the CLI on the Windows platform, using the -launchengine argument, every other character that you type gets gobbled up.
- Contour plot fails with HODAG Silo files.
- Node pick returns the wrong node with a slide mesh.
- VisIt's metadata server crashes in combination with a Lustre file system bug.
- VisIt sometimes crashes during transitions to scalable rendering mode.
- VisIt's compute engine crashes when generating a Surface plot of rect2d.silo
- Pick returns totally wrong values for multi-block MRI dataset with percent slice.
- VisIt's compute engine crashes when the IsoVolume operator is applied after the Slice operator.
- VisIt's viewer crashes when given a bad expression.
- VisIt's viewer crashes during re-open when there are bad expressions.
- VisIt's metadata server crashes when reading certain Flash files.
- VisIt's visit -movie movie generation script does not gracefully handle situations where VisIt cannot render an image in scalable rendering mode.
- A recursive expression can cause VisIt's viewer to hang.
- VisIt does not exit correctly when the Engine chooser window is open.
- VisIt has a picking problem with the 2D Boundary plot.
- The UV debug host profile should be interactive (poe) -- not psub.
- The Subset window does not represent the current plot in rare cases.
- The Streamline plot's streamline sources, which determine the locations of the seed points, do not limit the seed points' Z-value to zero when the input data is 2D.
- The Streamline plot only returns streamlines for the last selected domain.
- Views based on actual data extents are not copied to new windows on first reference.
- Mesh line offsets malfunction with the near clipping plane.
- The Truecolor plot leaks resources.
- Expressions of quantities from SAMRAI files no longer cause crashes.
- The IndexSelect operator using the block option can crash the compute engine or yield no data even when it should.
- The facelist filter causes the compute engine to crash on degenerate hex cells.
- The overall stability of ray casting volume rendering (previously accessed through the Software button has been greatly improved.
- Picks on sliced Vector plots are not correct.
- The avtOriginalNodes array is interpolated when sliced by the Slice operator.
- Specular lighting affects unlit plots.
- The Label plot option to draw both front and back facing cells in 3D does not work.
- Code to release data for the Label plot's Normals filter is disabled.
- No lighting for plot of data containing line elements.
- If you exit during a scalable render, the viewer does not exit.
- Some plot and operator windows add unwanted floating point precision.
- The Volume plot's legend now always reflects the correct variable range.
- Reference lines were not being drawn with labels.
- There are rendering artifacts when using pan or zoom with images that have shadows.
- The Slice operator's percent field incremented by 0.0001 unexpectedly.
- VisIt's xml2window code generation program does not handle ucharVector.
- Some databases do not display as ASCII characters in the Label plot even though they should.
- Odd behavior in CLI with queries when creating and deleting plots.
- makemili now does a better job with single processor dumps that have a naming convention similar to multiple processor dumps.
- Using the centered difference gradiant method can crash the Volume plot.
- The Pixie reader no longer reads data defined on 3d curvilinear meshes.
- Changing the time state with a plot that has been sliced through a zone fails with an Invalid File Exception.
- Multiple bugs in VisIt's expression language were fixed
- Slicing through a node causes an extraneous warning message to be displayed, giving the user the impression that the operation failed when in fact it worked.

Click the following link to view the release notes for the next version of VisIt: VisIt 1.4.2 Release Notes.

Click the following link to view the release notes for the previous version of VisIt: VisIt 1.4 Release Notes.