Tips


What do you get when you upgrade to the modern advanced professional graphics cards?  Aren't all graphics cards the same? 

Not at all.  Professional graphics cards offer features that we can leverage in EnSight, higher capacities, and professional graphics driver support. 

Features of EnSight that are only supported on recent card architectures:

1) Volume rendering, including embedded transparent surfaces
2) Hardware accelerated object picking
3) Dynamic object highlighting
4) Per-pixel correct transparency sorting
5) Greatly improved transparency performance
6) Part coloring enhancements: Improved limit fringes, alpha palettes, etc
7) Independently rendered annotation plane
8) Customizable anti-aliasing

Features of workstation class cards:

1) Stereo display support
2) Faster, higher quality line drawing
3) Improved memory management and drivers
4) Multi-display support (e.g. a PowerWall or  Cave in a single card).

More general benefits to EnSight, due to improved
graphics architectures and increased memory sizes:

1) Larger geometries can be manipulated in real-time
2) Rendering performance (often 2x improvement for each generation of graphics card)

Those are probably the biggest items.  Not necessarily in the order that all people would agree about.  The #1 issue is improved productivity as the user has:

a) Entirely new ways of looking at their data via Volume Rendering, Alpha Palettes, etc.
b) Improved direct interaction, resulting in fewer missteps
c) Improved interaction rates, allowing them to ask and formulate answers to more questions in the same amount
of time

What do you mean by "modern"?

When we talk about "modern" cards here we generally refer to cards that have at least DirectX 10 levels of functionality.  Even if you are not on Windows and using DirectX 10,  that level of graphics card is what we mean by modern.

 

Who makes "modern" graphics cards?

Look for nVidia Quadro lines and the AMD/ATI graphics cards.

    Support page for AMD/ATI graphics cards certification is here.

    Support page for nVidia graphics cards certification is here.

 

 

For further reading...

See our article on Virtual Reality (VR) on large display systems like Power Walls and CAVES.

 

 

*Stereo:  On your desktop you can use local stereo displays for free:

  • EnSight (any version, not actually free, but no additional cost)
  • EnSight CFD Free  (yes, there is a free version)
  • EnLiten
  • Reveal
  • EnVE provides for for basic and batch video editing of movies in stereo format
  • EnVideo for stereo video/movie/animation playback.
  • Desktop stereo display requires the use of an graphics card configured to support OpenGL Quad-buffered stereo display. CEI tools will automatically detect the presence of such desktop stereo graphics setups and will enable various stereo playback options automatically.
User Defined Interface
EnSight 8.2 can be easily customized to better fit the specific visualization needs of each user.  It is possible to add your own user interface to EnSight in order to enhance the current GUI or you can replace the entire GUI with your own. Button text, tool tips, icon image, and script files are all easily managed via EnSight's integrated, hierarchal python editor as well as the native command language scripts. Several examples of this can be found in the 8.2 installation.  This user defined interface is now turned on by default, see image below.
userdefined
Click through for higher resolution image

Self-extracting .els and .csf files from within EnSight
CEI has supported to ability to generate "embedded" executables that combine the viewing program and the data file(s) into one, self-extracting executable for some time. This system allows users to share complex, interactive visualizations with colleagues without requiring the recipients to install any additional software on their systems.  This capability has been available in the Reveal tool for some time and in the EnLiten tool on the Windows platform.  With the latest release of EnSight, support in the EnLiten tool has been extended to additional platforms. Moreover, the ability to generate these files has been integrated directly into EnSight, making it possible to generate these files in fewer steps than before.  It also allows the files to be generated directly from the EnSight command language, making it possible to script the entire post-processing operation in batch mode.  With these new capabilities, it is possible for a user to produce portable (install-less) interactive 3D datasets as part of standardized, automated processing data.

 


New Calculator Functions in EnSight 

With the 8.2.6h release, a number of new calculator functions have been added to EnSight. These include basic statistics, multivariate regression, common statistical distributions and signed distance field functionality. The articles in this series will cover these new functions and give simple examples of their use.

 

Read more...

 

EnSight Plotting Samples
Quick Tutorial
 
   
QueryPlotters_650x650.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using Interactive Query and the Plotter

Right click to download movie

 

time_fft.png

 

graph_cp_moving_enve_350.png
 
pug_Cp_2pass_1920orig_350x350.png
 

Read more...

"Test:" commands are a form of shortcut in EnSight that allow sophisticated visualizations or data processing with little user input. A complete listing of the "test:" commands may be obtained by issuing the command "test: list" in the Command Entry box in the Command dialog of EnSight (Edit -> Command).

Warning: "Test:" commands are not supported and are experimental, allowing CEI and customers to try out new features and make unique tweaks without extensive modifications to the EnSight user interface. Use these commands with caution.

Two very useful commands are the "test: special xyz clip," used to create a midplane clip, and "test: special 2d plot," used to create a plot of values computed at a number of incremental positions of a line or plane clip.

The procedures to use these two "test:" commands are described below.

 

Read more...

 

EnSight Isosurface Sample Quick Tutorial
isosurfaces350x350.png EnSight82Basic2A.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using EnSight for CFD - Part 2

Right click to download movie

     

 

EnSight Streamline Samples
Quick Tutorial
streamlines.png  EnSight82Basic2A.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using EnSight for CFD - Part 2

Right click to download movie

 

streamlines3.png  streamlines4.png 
       

 


 

EnSight Transient Particle Trace/Pathline Samples
Quick Tutorial

   
PathLines.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Creating Transient Flow Field Pathlines

Right click to download movie

 

 

 

 
 
 
 

 

EnSight Vortex Core Samples
Quick Tutorial
picture4.png
   
FlowFeatureExtraction.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Extracting Flow Features

Right click to download movie

 

  Article 
vortex_core1.png

Getting the Most Out of EnSight's
Improved Flow-Feature Extraction

Right click to download article

 
 
 
 

 

 

EnSight Boundary Layer Samples
Quick Tutorial
BL_Displacement_350x350.png FlowFeatureExtraction.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Extracting Flow Features

Right click to download movie

  Article 
BL_Thickness_350x350.png

Extraction of Boundary Layer
Characteristics from Fluent Results

Right click to download article 

Elevated_Surface_350x350.png   
BL_Thickness_plane_350x350.png   

 

EnSight Surface Restricted Traces Samples
Quick Tutorial
surface_streamlines350x350.png FlowFeatureExtraction.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Extracting Flow Features

Right click to download movie

 

  Article
oillines.png

Getting the Most Out of EnSight's

Improved Flow-Feature Extraction

Right click to download article  

 
 
 
 

With EnSight 8.2.6(c), CEI has expanded the supplied collection of user defined tools to include “QuickTools”. QuickTools are a set of simple Python based user defined EnSight extensions that simplify common operations that might otherwise be complex or impossible to do easily in EnSight. QuickTools are provided with complete source code and users are encouraged to inspect and modify them to meet their own needs.

Accessing QuickTools

userdefined_icon The QuickTools are accessed through the user defined tools icon from the icon strip located below the main EnSight menu bar. If this icon is not available in your icon set, you can enable it using the “Modify and save icon layout…” button in the “General User Interface” preferences panel. When the icon is selected, the user defined tools panel is displayed.  The panel is a collection of horizontal tabs and looks like this:  

image2_2

To access the QuickTools, click on the “EnSight Quick Tools” tab and you will see the QuickTools.

Import a query from a CSV (Comma Separated Value) formatted text file

EnSight has the ability to read queries from external ASCII text files, but the format of these files are specific to EnSight (see the User Manual, chapter 11.10). Many users have data in standard tabular formatted text files (e.g. CSV files from Excel) and may not be in a position to easily reformat this type of data. This QuickTool is designed to help, it can import data directly from CSV and similarly formatted ASCII files as EnSight queries. When the QuickTools button is clicked, the user is first prompted to select the file to open.  Once a file is selected, a dialog is opened to select importing options:

image4_2

 

Read more...

Import a movie or image as a textured annotation

A common request at CEI is the desire to include actual video footage of an experiment synchronized with the simulated model. In EnSight, this involves creating a 2D rectangle annotation and texturing it by a video clip. EnSight has had the ability to apply a texture to 2D shape annotations since early in the 8.2 release cycle and the ability to use movie files as textures in more recent releases. The operation is normally performed through the 2D shapes and texture map editors in EnSight. However, there are a relatively large number of options and settings for these operations and while they describe what operations they perform, it is not always obvious that these features might be used to create an animated annotation. This QuickTool simplifies the process, reducing it to a single step and setting all of the various options you need. When the QuickTool button is clicked, EnSight will prompt you for an image/movie file. Once the selected imagery is loaded into memory, the tool creates a new rectangle annotation and sets up the texture mapping.  An example image of the result:

image3_2 

Note that if an animation is loaded as an annotation, it is linked to the solution times of the loaded dataset. To cause the animation to play back, you need only play the solution time. One thing to be cautious of, EnSight does load the entire video clip into memory and stores it in a lossless fashion internally. Larger clips, especially with large numbers of frames can use up a great deal of memory. The resulting animated clip and geometry can of course be exported to an EnLiten file as well, including the integrated playback.

The EnSight graphics performance tests

 

Read more...

With EnSight 8.2.6(e), CEI introduced a new, native Python API. This API builds on and largely supersedes the 'ensight.sendmesg()' API provided in previous versions of EnSight. The 'sendmesg()' API is still present in EnSight, but Python developers may find this new API much simpler to work with. Tools are also provided to automate the conversion of EnSight command language into this new API. These functions are fully documented in section 6 of the EnSight 'Interface' manual.

Accessing the Python interpreter

The Python interpreter in EnSight can be directly accessed through the File->Command... menu option and then selecting the "Python" tab of the Command Dialog. The dialog looks like this:

 

python_tab 

  

Read more...

One of the new QuickTools in EnSight 9.0 allows the user to generate "Skyboxes". 

Skyboxes 101

What is a skybox? The idea behind a skybox is that a carefully constructed texture, if mapped onto a cube appears like the sky and horizon from inside of the cube.  A picture is the best way to explain.  In the animation, you can see the skybox from both outside of the textured cube and from inside of the cube. When you place geometry inside of the cube, it appears to be inside of an environment.

Need more Information?

We've moved to a new website.  This website, www.ensight.com,  is useful for finding information (sample movies and screencasts) about EnSight 9.  But EnSight 9 downloads and EnSight 10 and EnSight CFD information and downloads are now here: www.ceisoftware.com      There are many links on this website to www.ceisoftware.com as we make this transition.

Free EnSight CFD Menu Button JoomlaTry EnSight Menu Button Joomla    CEI EnSight Phone Number

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