VisIt 2.7 Release Notes

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

Sections

- Features for all users
- Features for advanced users
- Changes in GUI behavior
- Changes to file format readers
- Changes to plots
- Changes to operators
- Other bug fixes
- Changes for VisIt developers

General features added in version 2.7

- VisIt's movie scripting has been updated to use the movie encoder logic present in the visit_utiles module. This brings support for additional movie formats.
- An option was added to allow the user to specificy the floating point precision to be used by VisIt. It is accessible in the graphical user interface via Controls->Preferences. From the command line interface, the SetPrecisionType(arg) function is used to specify the precision. The argument is one of the following values: 0 or "float", 1 or "native", 2 or "double". The default is 'native', meaning VisIt will attempt to use the same precision that the reader serves up.
- An option was added to allow the user to save the current session at exit and restore that session on start up. This can be enabled in the graphical user interface via Controls->Preferences and checking the "Restore session on startup" option under the "Session files" section. The default is not to restore the last session.

Advanced features added in version 2.7

- The DataBinning operator now automatically discards bins that have no data when creating curves.

Changes in GUI behavior for version 2.7

- Active operators shown in expanded plot list entries are now highlighted only when their plot is selected or when the Apply operators to all plots check box is checked. This cuts down on visual clutter for plots that are not selected.
- When a user has edited the plot description in the plot list that description will be used in the plot's legend instead of the basic plot name.

File format reader changes in version 2.7

- The PFLOTRAN reader now supports unstructured PFLOTRAN grid files.
- Exporting of WavefrontOBJ files is now supported in both serial, and parallel.
- Reading and exporting of PLY files is now supported in both serial, and parallel. Additionaly, PLY files may be exported using a colormap to export colors.
- Reading GMV files that encoded polygons in a general cell now works.
- Added a reader for GHOST (Geophysical High Order Suite for Turbulence) files.
- The OpenFOAM reader has been updated to support newer OpenFOAM conventions, including Lagrangian clouds and multi-region data. Sub-meshes are now presented separately, instead of as selectable subsets together with internalMesh, to reduce duplication of plotted data. The are three File Open options:
  - Case Type: Reconstructed (default) or Decomposed
  - Convert Cell Data To Point Data: true or false (default)
  - Read Zones: true or false (default)
  The Read Zones option will make available (if present in the data) cellZones, faceZones and pointZones meshes.

  NOTE: Boundary Field names specified by regular expressions is currently not supported.

- The ExodusII reader now handles quadratic cell types, and correctly handles 2-component vectors defined on 3D meshes.
- Added a reader for BOUT++ files.

Changes to VisIt's plots in version 2.7

- Several plots have been enhanced with additional glyph types: Octahedron, Tetrahedron, Sphere Geometry. The Sphere Geometry glyph provides a geometry-based sphere that can be scaled by a variable, whereas the original Sphere glyph is pixel-based.
- The MultiCurve plot was enhanced to allow the user to specify the marker scale and marker line width.
- The Curve plot has been enhanced so that the area under the curve can optionally be filled with color or a gradient.
- The Curve plot has been enhanced to support curves specified in polar coordinates. There is now an option to have the curve converted from polar to cartesian, and options to specify the units (Radians or Degrees) and coordinate ordering (R-theta or Theta-R).
- The Poincare plot has been deprecated and is now an operator. To access the operator use the Pseudocolor plot operator menu option.
- The Streamline plot has been deprecated and is now the Integral Curve operator. Though deprecated the Streamline Plot can still be accessed for backward compatibility. Going forward please use the Integral Curve operator which is accessed via the Pseudocolor plot operator menu option.

Changes to VisIt's operators in version 2.7

- The Project operator's window was modified to make it's mapping notation more explicit.
- The Box and Cylinder selection operators have an option to do an Inverse selection.
- The FTLE operator has been renamed to be the LCS operator and has options for doing FTLE, FDLE, and FSLE as well as other operations.

Other bugs fixed in version 2.7

- Connections to libsim-enabled simulations on remote systems can now be made via ssh tunneling.
- Lineout now works on operator-created variables such as those created via the DataBinning operator.
- The Windows installer will now always show the host-profiles selections.
- A bug in the exporting of STL files in parallel was fixed.
- CMFE expressions involving virtual database specifications, and saved in VisIt settings now load properly.
- CMFE expressions created via the Data-Level Comparisons window no longer crash the engine on Windows.
- VisIt can now plot an expression when switching active sources.
- CMFE containing expressions from a donor database can now be plotted.
- Multiple CMFE expressions can now be used simultaneously. This functionality was previously available, but it would occasionally lead to internal errors were one of the CMFE expressions was used in the place of others (due to name collision).
- Time-derivative expressions containing compound variables (eg mesh/ireg) can now be plotted.
- A bug that caused the clipping of double precision structured grids to return zero cells was corrected.
- The Windows version can now handle compressed images sent from a remote engine.
- Several double-precision data issues were corrected in the Silo writer.

Changes for VisIt developers in version 2.7

- VisIt was modified to work with the publicly released version of VTK-6.0 instead of the patched version of VTK-5.8 we had been using.
- Third party library locations normally set in a config-site file can be overriden by modifying the CMakeCache.txt file and re-running cmake. Any changes to the config-site file after first cmake run will still take precedence.
- Added "-apitrace " debugging option. Default arguments are "--api gl". On Windows, the location of apitrace is found through an APITRACE_EXE environment variable.
- xml2cmake now supports conditional logic when specified in a plugin's code file. The code file would look like this:

             Target: xml2cmake
             Condition: HAVE_LIBNETCDF
             Includes: ${NETCDF_INCLUDE_DIR}
             Definitions: -DHAVE_NETCDF
             LinkDirectories: ${NETCDF_LIBRARY_DIR}
             ELinkLibraries: ${NETCDF_LIB}
             VLinkLibraries: ${NETCDF_LIB}
             ESources: avtSpecialNetcdfFilter.C
             VSources: avtSpecialNetcdfFilter.C

  "Condition:" is required, and is what you would put in CMake's IF macro. The rest of the options depend upon the Condition. Not all of the options are represented in the example, nor are all of the options required to be listed.

- xml2cmake was enhanced to suport 'Code' keywords if it is the target.

             Target: xml2cmake
             Code: AddSubdir
             Prefix:
             Postfix: ADD_SUBDIRECORTY(./extra_code_dir)

  The name is not used, only what is placed in Prefix and/or Postfix.

Click the following link to view the release notes for the previous version of VisIt: VisIt 2.6.3 Release Notes.