ParaView

ParaView is a parallel, scalable, visualization package from Kitware. Effectively, it is a GUI interface to Kitware's Visualization ToolKit (VTK). Thus most ParaView operations have a VTK equivalent. See https://paraview.org/ for more information.

Running

To launch a single threaded ParaView instance, first connect via VNC, then use vglconnect to connect to one of the compute machines:

 vglconnect -s viz003

Add the desired version of ParaView to your environment (the below example will get the "default" version)

 soft add @paraview

and launch the GUI:

 vglrun paraview

Viewing Serial Cases

Within the GUI, open the .pht file that corresponds to your case. The .pht file will appear in the "pipeline browser" within ParaView. To actually see your model, click the "apply" button on the properties tab. To visualize a particular flow property, choose that property from the dropdown menu in the "active variable controls" toolbar, and then click the button corresponding to the type of visualization you want (contour, slice, etc.) in the "common" toolbar. The properties of the visualization element can then be controlled in the "properties" tab.

For more help with the ParaView GUI, see ParaView's tutorial.

Parallel (Client/Server) Mode

One viz node

To visualize cases in parallel on one viz node, start the ParaView server in parallel with

 mpirun -np N pvserver

• N is the number of processes, maximum of 8 on one viz node.

Multiple viz nodes

To visualize using more than one viz node, start a ParaView server utilizing multiple viz nodes with

 mpirun --prefix A -x DISPLAY=":0" -x PATH -x LD_LIBRARY_PATH -hostfile ~matthb2/hostfile-ib -np 16 pvserver

• --prefix A mpirun is located at A/bin/mpirun; the which mpirun command will tell you this. Make sure to add one of the @paraview-verison-number macros from softenv first, as it will set the best mpirun path for that version. A is the 'prefix' directory. In traditional unix, the prefix directory contains bin, etc, include, lob, share directories associated with the program.

The -x flag means 'copy a variable' from the machine you run mpirun from (the headnode) to those it's starting processes on (the slaves).

• -x DISPLAY=":0" Location of the X-server. Assumes localhost. Could do viz002:0 to use graphics card on viz002 instead. 0 is the default graphics hardware, whereas 1, 2, etc could be VNC servers or other software display.

• -x PATH The lookup path for the binary. PATH is an environment variable maintained by the shell.

• -x LD_LIBRARY_PATH The lookup path for shared libraries. Same as PATH, but for dynamically-linked libraries.

• -hostfile ~matthb2/hostfile-ib File specifying list of hosts. Contents are lines that look like 172.18.4.11 slots=8. This is mpi-implementation specific. IP address of viz001, for instance, and the number of cores it has (slots=8).

• -np 16 Total number of processes that mpirun should start. Maximum is 16 when using two viz nodes (8 per node).

ALCF

Instead of building ParaView on ALCF it is much easier to view ALCF files in ParaView on the viz nodes via a client/server connection. First, connect to ALCF and start an interactive session (see ALCF). Then, run this script on ALCF in the folder that contains the .pht file you wish to open:

 /projects/cfdml_aesp/Viz/cooley/Viz-SyncIO/pvserverLaunch5.4.1.sh

It should then say "Accepting connection(s)". Now, go to a terminal on a viz node and open Paraview 5.4.1. You can load this version by running:

 soft add @paraview-5.4.1
 vglrun paraview

Now, click the "Connect" button (third from the left, under "View"). Click "Add Server". Under "Name", enter the first string of digits after "Accepting connection(s):" (cc001, for example). Under "Host", enter:

 ccXXX.cooley.pub.alcf.anl.gov

where XXX is the server number. And finally, enter Port number 8000, click configure, and connect. You can now browse and open .pht files on ALCF Cooley!

Subpages

• ParaView/Automation with Python
• ParaView/Run on Remote Machine
• ParaView/Tricks
• ParaView/Visualizing PHASTA with SyncIO