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In this new version we've packed Python scripting, 2D texture mapping
for vastly more realistic scenes, and enhanced cluster
post-processing by making EnSight automatic and applicable to models which
are no longer decomposed. From customer requests, we've made
it
possible to customize the user interface and add your own right-click menus. We
have also added several new readers including: NifTi-1/Analyze for
medical imaging, and Wavefront OBJ
for
3D content similar to .STL and VRML. We've improved the FLUENT,
ABAQUS, ANSYS, MSC.Nastran, LS-Dyna readers, as well as many others.
New and Modified Features
Writing out movies in EnSight has been greatly improved in EnSight
8.2. More movie formats than ever before are now supported and
unique capabilities have been added.
Writing Stereo Movies, Avoiding screensaver content in your movies,
making really big movies and images and making crisp, scalable images
and movies.
| Even if you are not currently running in stereo mode or are not running
on
stereo capable hardware such as a laptop or low-end graphics card you
can still create stereo movies and images for playback later on other
hardware. You can also render the images to off-screen buffers which
lets you create really big movies or images (size limited only by the file format inherent limits) and
avoid that screensavers or overlapping windows would be captured in
your rendering movie. And you can set the anti-aliasing quality
settings so that images have smoother, crisper lines, and can be scaled
with less artifacts.
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Saving Image and Movie Formats
 Embedded EnVE:
EnSight 8.2 utilizes a user defined image library (UDIL), which is a
standardized library format for adding movie and image formats for
reading and writing. Incorporated
into this image library is support for the following image/movie
formats: AVI (raw, mjpeg, mpg4), BMP, EVO, QuickTime (mpg4) Animated
GIF, JPEG, PNG, PPM, XPM, SGI, LLNL SM, TIFF, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4. In addition, it is possible for the user to define his
own formats. Any added formats are seen by EnSight at run time.
User Defined Interface
 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. This is done through Python. Several examples of this
can be found in the 8.2 installation.
By default, this button is hidden, to turn it on you have to select
Edit -> Preferences -> General User Interface, select the "Modify
and save feature icon layout" button. It is described as "User
defined tools".
If you have turned this feature ON using the Preference, then the icon will appear as shown to the right.
An example user-defined GUI is provided during installation as an example and shown below.
Right Click User Defined capabilities
| The mouse just got a whole lot more powerful in EnSight 8.2 as you can
now define even more options for what happens when you click,
double-click, and even chord (left & right, etc.) the mouse keys.
All the options are controlled by the Mouse and Keyboard Preference.
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In addition you can now select "User defined menu" which is a list of macros you define to suit your working style.
It is possible to define a right click action. Upon the right
click action a custom user interface will pop up. With this
custom right click interface you can query what was selected at the
time of the right click event and perform actions accordingly.
For example, from your code you can find that a certain part number and
certain node number was selected. You could then query this node
over time and plot the results. Or make the
selected part invisible, etc.
Texture mapping
The color dialog in Part mode now has a button "Edit texture...." which
brings up a dialog that allows you to read and apply 2D textures to any
part. Many options are available. Texture images are available from many places on the Internet, for example, http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/texture/
Image on left shows dataset before texture mapping, dataset on right shows image after texture mapping.
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| Images showing visualization before adding texture mapping: |
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Image of flame after adding texture mapping, notice the rust
stained brown metal texture and the use of transparency in the scalar
field of methane concentration used to recreate a realistic looking
combustion flame.
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Crash visualization emphasizing deformation by applying opacity and color variation using alpha channel texture mapping.
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To use textures simply select "Edit texture ..." from the part color
dialog.
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Selecting "Edit Texture.." will bring up the texture dialog,
the top of this includes 8 texture palettes to access
frequently used textures.
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Annotation
In EnSight 8.2 you can tell the story of your post-processing with
improved text and graphical annotations including crisp, scalable
TrueType fonts, new dials and guages for graphical display of
data, and international text. We also
added a 3D arrow which can be attached to a node or absolute place in
space as well.
The annotation dialogs are full of new capabilities.
See below examples of the new dial (a round gauge like a clock,
odometer, or tachometer) that shows the value of a single valued
variable, a bar which can be vertical or horizontal to show the
value of a single-valued variable, and a 3D arrow (lower-right). 
Not shown are 2d arrows, circles, and rectangles.
Text annotations can now span multiple lines. They can also use a number of True-Type fonts.
While updating text annotations it is possible to have the updates
occur dynamically, i.e. the updates are shown in the graphics window
while you type.
International Fonts
Windows has support for international characters. "I don't know
I only work here as written in Chinese and Japanese".
TrueType Fonts
Text annotation in EnSight 8.0
Text annotation in EnSight 8.2 (true-type fonts). Notice the smoother text.
The default annotation font and size (used for node/element labels, the
axis system labels, etc.) can be set as a preference. See
Edit->Preferences->Annotation
Connections
Under the Case pull down you will find two new options.
"Connection details..." brings up a dialog showing information for
the case selected, such as amount of data transferred and what data is
loaded.
The "Connection settings..." choice pulls up a new dialog. In
this dialog you can switch your server or SoS connection to a different
machine, save preferences for these machines and add/replace cases.
This essentially allows you to change the connection settings after
EnSight starts up (but before you read data).
Commands and Macros
The command dialog is completely new. If you play a command file
you can now see the upcoming commands as well as the history. You
can also right click to set breakpoints as well as save/execute the
selected commands.
Python
A separate tab will allow you to see, modify, and define macros. Another tab will allow you to execute Python scripts.
Part List
The part list can be organized into different tree list views by
List->Show Tree and selecting one of the options. In EnSight 8.0 a
parent/child tree list is available. In EnSight 8.2 we add
the ability to view in part tree mode part attributes such as
visibility, line vs. shaded, etc.
Tools
The quadric and line tools now have rotate handles. The Transformation dialog
has been modified to allow you to rotate these tools from the dialog.
Given the quadric and line tools now have an axis system, they now translate in
the tools axis system instead of transforming in the global coordinate
system.
 
The plane tool can now be defined by three node numbers. As these node numbers move over time the plane tool will update.
The line tool has also been modified similarly, i.e., it can be defined
by two node numbers. The pick option has been extended to allow
you to pick the line and plane tools via node numbers.
Clips
The quadric clips can now be finite. The line clips can be of type mesh or grid - previous versions of
EnSight only did a uniform sampling (grid clip) for the line clip
option. In/Out clips can now be finite for all tools. A plane clip can be defined by three node numbers. Over time the
node numbers may move in which case the plane clip will update
accordingly. The line clip can be defined by two node numbers. Over time the
node numbers may move in which case the line clip will update
accordingly.
Query
The X/Y query as well as the Interactive query now show markers that
update to new locations if you change time steps. The markers
also update if the model is displaced.
In Interactive Query mode it is now possible to query the min/max values.
In Interactive Query mode it is possible to "expand" the query out to
show the neighboring nodes and elements. You have control over
the number of levels you wish to see. The "expand" capability is
done through the subset part capability and thus when you turn off the
interactive query you will get a pop-up dialog asking if you want to
save the subset part used by the query expansion.
Displacements
The coordinates of model parts can be modified on the EnSight server by
scaling the original coordinates and scaling/adding to this a scalar
for each of the x/y/z coordinate values. Thus it is possible to
entirely swap out a model parts coordinates to another variable or
apply displacements on the server side of EnSight.
Element Representation
It is possible, for any element representation, to load the geometry as
points + normals only. For large datasets this can substantially
reduce the amount of graphics processing while adequately displaying
the data.
Fast Display Mode
An option of "Invisible" has been added to the part choices for fast display mode.
Particle Traces
Massed Particle trace settings have been simplified.
Massed Particles can now have Rebound with a coefficient of restitution and friction.
Timeout
You can set up a maximum amount of time you are willing to wait for any
server operation. See Edit->Preferences->Performance
Cluster Post-Processing Features
Server-of-servers allows EnSight to post-process data in a distributed
parallel way, allowing for much faster post-processing of large
datasets. In EnSight 8.2 Server-of-Servers 2.0 (SoS2)
It is now possible to read any file format while using the SoS.
Previous versions required the use of a SoS case file. However,
the data reader must be modified to support SOS.
It is now possible in EnSight 8.2 to use the SoS with multiple servers
even if the
data is not decomposed. This version of EnSight has the ability
to auto-decompose data sets "on the fly". Even when
distributed parallel computing solvers are run on a cluster they don't
always anticipate that the post-processing software will be able to run
in a distributed way as well, so it is not uncommon for results to be
glued back together into large files. And even if the model was
decomposed by a solver it is often advantageous to decompose the data
in different sized chunks for visualization due to the need for
interactivity, different clusters for visualization, and differences in
compute technology for solving and post-processing. Since EnSight
8.2 can decompose the data itself on the fly, customers can have the
advantages of distributed parallel post-processing without waiting for
the solver developers to make the data formats compatible and
decomposed. If the reader is already modified for this it just happens
transparently. Contact CEI for a list of readers which are
updated for this feature.
Resources
A resource file may be defined and specified to EnSight describing what
computer resources are available to run the various EnSight
components. This greatly simplifies parallel setup. It is
also possible to use environment variables to define resources that
make it convenient to use with cluster management allocation software.
DR
The distributed rendering capabilities can take advantage of the
Resources definitions that greatly simplifies parallel-distributed
rendering when using the image compositing mode.
APIs and Data Formats
Wavefront .obj Reader: video games and entertainment industry 3D models and geometry reader.
Wavefront OBJ (object) files were devised originally for Wavefront's
Advanced Visualizer application to store geometric objects composed of
lines, polygons, and free-form curves and surfaces. Wavefront is best
known for its high-end computer graphics tools, including modeling,
animation, and image compositing tools. The Wavefront OBJ format is a
useful standard for representing polygonal data in ASCII form.
Medical Imaging Reader: A reader for the National Institute of Health (NIH)'s Neuroimaging Informatics Technology Initiative (NifTI-1) Analyze-style data format
useful for accessing models from the medical imaging community. NIfTI-1
is adapted from the widely used ANALYZE™ 7.5 file format. The hope is
that older non-NIfTI-aware software that uses the ANALYZE 7.5 format
will still be compatible with NIfTI-1. NIfTI-1 uses the "empty space"
in the ANALYZE 7.5 header to add several new features. There are
publicly available translators are available to convert DICOM imagery
into this format.
HTS Reader: reads models from Lawrence Livermore National Labs HTS format.
Yaw/Pitch/Roll have been added to the rigid body capability of the EnSight Case Gold data format.
The user-defined reader API has added the option to read data in a
decomposed manner - this is used during EnSight's auto decompose
capability for parallel servers. The API has also added a
time-history capability. If implemented by the reader the time-history
information is available as query items in the EnSight Query
interaction area. At this time the ABAQUS reader has this implemented.
Variable names can now be up to 49 characters (up from 19). In
order to provide backwards compatibility for the command language
EnSight keep the old shorter name as well as the new longer name.
User-defined readers, in order to have command language compatibility,
should modify the variable name but also provide the shorter name. The
user-defined reader API explains this.
Compatibilities
Archives are NOT compatible between 8.0 and version 8.2. Command language is compatible between earlier 8.0 and 8.2
versions of EnSight.
Since the command language is compatible, context files are also compatible between 8.0 and 8.2.
The MRU (most recently used) list is not brought forward from 8.0 to
8.2. The number and details of the MRU is completely different
between the two versions and it was thus deemed impractical to preserve
this.
Other Components
EnLiten 8.2
remains essentially unchanged in look, feel, and functionality but has
some new features including Pack & Go, True Type fonts and textures.
EnVe 2.0 adds a user interface allowing it to be used effectively for simple video editing.
QuickTime components for EVO
 (QuickTime is only available for Apple and
Windows platforms). This enables use of the EVO format with popular
non-linear video editing applications based on QuickTime framework such
as Apple's iMovie, QuickTime, and Final Cut Pro and Adobe's After
Effects.
DirectShow plug-in for EVO (on Windows Platform). This enables
use of the EVO format with popular applications based on Directshow
framework such as Microsoft PowerPoint and MediaPlayer.
Reveal adds the ability to save multiple variables from EnSight and thus you can switch which variables you wish to view.
Installation
All Platforms
EnSight 8.2 will install itself under INSTALL_DIRECTORY/CEI/ensight82/
and will not modify any files previously installed with earlier
versions.
By design, the ensight8, ensight8_client, ensight8_server, and
ensight8_sos scripts in the bin directory will run the version of
EnSight installed last (in this case 8.2). If you wish to run
older versions of EnSight, such as 8.0, you may do so by specifically
running this version such as "ensight80".
Macintosh Installer
Apple Macintosh users can also use a specific native installer.
Licensing
EnSight 8.2 uses the same SLiM license manager and same license keys as
8.0. No change to the licensing is necessary if you are currently
running 8.0.
GUI Changes
A new User Defined icon is now visible in the feature icons. This
icon will pull up a user defined GUI as explained in the New and
Modified Features section. If no user-defined elements are
available the icon will not be shown.
Under the File pull down the following changes have been made:
"Connect server..." has been removed. The connection settings have now been moved to the Case pull down.
"Open..." and "Data (reader)..." have been consolidated into an "Open..." option with a "Simple" and "Advanced" capability
"Record current animation..." has been moved to the File->Save options
The "Sort..." button immediately under the part list has been renamed
"List..." The List... pull down contains several new options for
tree list view - see the New and Modified Features section.
The Variable list found in the Feature Detail Editor for Variables and Calculator now shows the Case that a variable belongs to
All of the detail editors now show all variables available in any
variable chooser. The variable will be activated as needed.
In 8.0 the detail editors showed only the active variables.
In the Feature Detail Editor (Calculator) dialog all variables are now
shown in the calculator section. EnSight now activates the
variables as needed
The Displacement icon in Part mode has been modified.
New icons have been added to Annotation mode to reflect new capabilities.
The View->Static Lighting option has been removed
Up/Down arrows to control value fields have been added in several
places such as particle trace animation controls and vector arrow scale
factor.
The Print/Save Image dialog has been modified to show new options available for printing.
Documentation
The User, How-To, Command Language, and Getting Started manuals have
all been updated to reflect changes in 8.2. There is also a new
user-defined manual.
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