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Common Visualization Tasks

Loading a CFS result file

  1. In the menu bar go to File → Open... and then select the result file from CFS, e.g. results_hdf5/run.cfs
  2. Mark the result in the Pipeline Browser and tick/untick the Regions you want to load in the Properties tab
  3. click Apply in the Properties tab

Visualizing Field Results

After opening a result file

  1. Mark the result in the Pipeline Browser
  2. Select which result to display in the drop-down of the Active Variable Controls toolbar

    The icon shows if results are defined on the nodes (points) or in the center of the elements (cell symbol).

  3. Use the Representation Toolbar to choose the desired appearance

    Most useful are Surface With Edges to show element boundaries, or just Surface.

Plotting Vector Fields

After opening a result file and marking it in the Pipeline Browser

  1. Use the Glyph filter in the Common toolbar (or e.g. Filters → Search...).
  2. Select the vector valued data.
  3. Click Apply.
  4. Choose the Coloring in the Properties tab of the filter (or in the Active Variable Controls toolbar).

The Scaling options can be used to adapt the size of the vectors. For example, by choosing the vector field in Scale Array and Scale by Magnitude for the Vector Scale Mode, the vectors are displayed according to their magnitude, multiplied by the Scale Factor.

The Masking option determines the number of vectors that are displayed.

The steps are also visualized in the gif below:

Show Deformed Geometry

After opening a result file and marking it in the Pipeline Browser

  1. Use the Warp By Vector filter in the Common toolbar (or e.g. Filters → Search...).
  2. Select the desired data for Vectors.
  3. Specify the Scale Factor.
  4. Click Apply.
  5. Optionally, choose the Coloring in the Properties tab of the filter (or in the Active Variable Controls toolbar) and show the undeformed structure, too.

    Click the eye symbol in the Pipeline Browser to toggle the display of certain pipeline elements.

The steps are also visualized in the gif below:

Show Multi-Step Results

  1. After loading the result file, the desired Analysis Step can be selected.

    Analysis Step corresponds to the index of the sequenceStep in the input-xml-file.

  2. Click Apply to update your choice.

Save a Screenshot

In order to save a screenshot of your View, the following steps are necessary.

  1. File → Save Screenshot
  2. Choose file location.
  3. Select desired Size, Scaling, Coloring and Compression Level.

Animate Harmonic Results in Paraview

In this tutorial is a simple example used to show how to animate harmonic results in paraview. As Simulation we use the cantilever application and visualize the deformation via Warp by vector and animate the harmonic displacement.

  1. Open CFS-file.
  2. Choose needed Region.
  3. Check Animate Harmonics/Modal Results.
  4. Hit Apply.
  5. Choose right Analysis Step.
  6. Choose right Frequency Step.
  7. Hit Apply.

Now we want to visualize the displacement field, therefore:

  1. Select Warp by Vector (to see some cool deformation).
  2. Hit Apply.
  3. Select under Vectors mechDisplacement-mode (Its important to always select the mode-result, if choosen amplitude the direction is lost).
  4. Select a good Scale Factor.
  5. Hit Apply,
  6. Press play and enjoy a nice animation.

All the steps above are visualized as a gif as well:

To get the animation smoother, you can change the frames per second and many more under View => Animation View

You can also animate scalarfields (e.g. temperature field), vectorfields (e.g. magnetic flux density) and many more.

Save an Animation

After setting up an animation as shown above, the animation can be saved as follows:

  1. Select File → Save Animation.
  2. Choose file location and file name.
  3. Select desired Size, Scaling, Coloring and File - and Animation Options.

    If you select an image file type ParaView will save individual frames called name.NNNN.ext