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## Simulation Window

You can open the Simulation Window, shown in figure, by selecting the Simulations option from the Main Window's File menu. The main purpose of the Simulation Window is to display the progress of a simulation that is acting as a VisIt compute engine as it completes its visualization tasks. The Simulation Window also provides buttons that cause the simulation to perform simulation-defined commands such as saving out a restart dump. The list of commands depends on the functionality that the simulation wanted to expose to VisIt when it was instrumented.

Figure 11

The Simulation Window is divided up into two main areas. The top of the window, called the Simulation attributes area, displays various attributes of the simulation such as its name, when it was started, the name of the computer where it is running, the number of processors, etc. Below the Simulation attributes area, you will find controls that are also present in the Compute Engines Window such as the Interrupt button and Clear cache button. The Disconnect button is specific to the Simulation Window and when you click it, VisIt will detach from the running simulation, leaving it to continue its calculation. You can later reconnect to the simulation if you want to check up on the its progress.

The Commands area is located below the Simulation attributes area in the Simulation Window. The Commands area displays buttons for simulation-defined commands. When a simulation is instrumented to act as a VisIt compute engine, it publishes a list of commands that it can accept later. This allows the simulation user to provide hooks that allow the user to tell the simulation to execute certain commands like writing a restart file. Depending on the complexity of the commands that are exposed, VisIt could ultimately be used to steer the simulation as well as visualize its results.