I have to admit, I’ve never been a big fan of TecPlot. However, a new demo video from them of their “Tecplot Chorus” tool shows an amazing capability of taking a suite of simulation runs (over 100) and quickly loading them into a single tool for easy comparison processing, all in under 2 minutes.
There are lots of tools for analyzing and processing individual simulation runs, but handling large suite runs like this (where perhaps you vary an angle of attack across 45-degrees in half-degree increments, each of the 90 runs generating a few thousand timesteps of simulation data) are often forgotten but essential in large scale analysis. Got to give credit to TecPlot for this one, it’s impressive. Check out the video below.
A new tool from Tecplot today called “Chorus” jumps into the “simulation analytics” space, combining visualization with data maangement, statistics, and data mining techniques to make finding the gems of insight hidden in your massive CFD datasets easier than ever.
“Tecplot Chorus is the new generation of post-processing tools for engineers. The new paradigm of post processing is to simultaneously operate on sets of simulations instead of one at a time, and to take advantage of parallel computers to pre-compute visualizations. The unprecedented level of analysis enabled by Tecplot Chorus allows engineers to make more informed decisions faster, thus enabling companies to develop better products.”
The tool already has some great praise from big names too:
Swift Engineering CFD Analyst Andy Luo commented, “Our post processing productivity increased by an order of magnitude, thanks to Tecplot Chorus. Now I can do in five minutes what once took me four to six hours.”
Of course, such power isn’t cheap. Currently it’s $7,500 a year for a floating license, which works on Windows or Linux.
Tecplot has a great case-study from Continuum Dynamics about their use of Tecplot360 to create a ship air-wake database to be used in helping Helicopters landing on ships. Using TecPlot not only for its CFD capabilities but it’s visualization support as well, they have a few great paragraphs towards the bottom about their analysis procedures.
Tecplot 360 allowed CDI to graphically render the data for better analysis, as well as to check and double-check data, especially for previously-undetectable data. For example, CDI uses Tecplot 360 to measure tip vortices, rendered visually as an intertwined blue helix.
“I could extract data for each one of those vortices, such as the distance beneath the rotor, so I could compare it to experimental data,” said Whitehouse. “You can also see the vortex pairing, which was not something that had been predicted with CFD for a hovering helicopter before this point. You start to see new physics that have been observed experimentally, but that people maybe have had difficulty predicting.”
The US Army Corps of Engineers has several projects involved with maintaining the nations waterways, everything from hydroelectric power to fisheries. A project by Dr. Andy Goodwin statistically analyzes fish behaviour through common thoroughfares and dams, trying to find better models for routing them around dangerous areas. The TecPlot blog discusses how he’s integrated TecPlog360 into his CFD systems.
After examining a number of options, he selected Tecplot 360 to do this work for him. This was a good fit because Tecplot 360 already reads the most popular CFD file formats, and has an extensible architecture that allows Dr. Goodwin’s solver to interact with any data Tecplot 360 can read. And I was the lucky Tecplot developer selected to do the interfacing work.
You can see examples of his work on his youTube Page.
Disclaimer: The lab where I work was involved in the creation of several of the non-TecPlot visualizations in that YouTube feed.
Over at the Tecplot blog, Scott Imlay (Director of Research at Tecplot Inc) discusses a bit of what he saw at the recent VisWeek conference and in particular the “Stream Lines as Tangent Curves of a Derived Vector Field” paper by Tino Weinkauf and Holger Theisel.
What Weinhauf and Theisel did was develop an algorithm for computing, from the given vector field, a new vector field to which the streak lines are everywhere tangent. This allows streak lines to be computed in the same way as streamlines and particle paths. This is much faster (once the streak line vector field is computed) and makes a lot of additional analysis possible. The down side is that the new vector field is one dimension higher than the velocity vector field. For unsteady two-dimensional flow, the streak line vector field is four dimensional. If not done carefully, streak line computations using the new technique could be a real memory hog. Still, the benefits will probably outway the costs. Look for implementation of this new algorithm in the future
Yes it’s complicated :) However, Streaklines are frequently the #1 method for visualizing flow fields. They do the best of showing time-varying data with turbulent flow, and they are relatively easy to understand. Hopefully this paper will crop us in the easy-to-use software soon and we can all check it out!
The Tecplot website now contains an case study of MIT researchers using CFD simulations to simulate blood flow through vessels, and using it to design better stents. Of course, once the simulations are done they use TecPlot for the visualization and analysis.
The simulation yields numerically formatted results, however, making it difficult or impossible for the human brain to interpret. This is where visualization comes in. Using the Tecplot 360 CFD visualization tool, Dr. Edelman and Dr. Kolachalama successfully generated visuals that showed them how the artery and drugs would behave under different conditions — similar to looking at the visual results from an X-ray or video scope.
Researchers at Wright State University have been closely analyzing the flight patterns and aerodynamics of dragonflies in attempts to recreate the effect in a computer simulation. After several years of painstaking research, they’ve finally developed a working simulation that they visualized using TecPlot.
“The visual results showed the exact motion of a dragonfly taking off, including its body motion and wing deformations,” says Dr. Dong. “Now, by varying our validated mathematical model, we can begin to understand with great confidence how a dragonfly manages its wings to create the forces needed to lift its body up under a variety of conditions. Next, we need to repeat the process for other stages of flight like hovering, maneuvering, and landing.”
See videos of their simulation results after the break.
Tecplot has just released the new 2010 version of their Tecplot RS product for people working in reservoir simulation and research.
For engineers who want to cut time in understanding reservoir simulation results, Tecplot RS is a specialized visualization and analysis tool that helps increase your productivity. It gives you a full range of options for analyzing data with line graphs, 2D cross sections, and 3D grid plots. Of all the post-processing tools available, Tecplot RS is the easiest to use and produces the most visually powerful output.
New features include streamlined workflow controls and a 40% improvement in load times for large grids. Available for free to existing SMS agreements, and a trail version is available.
TecPlot held a special webinar yesterday where they demonstrated some of the new features in the upcoming 360 2009 R2.
Tecplot 360 2009 R2 Sneak Peek Webinar.
Slated for release later this month, the latest upgrade to Tecplot 360 2009 will allow you to handle bigger datasets in less time than ever before. When benchmarked with moderate-size datasets, for example, the time-to-first-image is 2.5 times faster, slicing data is twice as fast; and animations are up to 35% faster than previous versions. Add to that bigger dataset handling capabilities and a variety of user-requested feature enhancements, and Tecplot 360 continues to be the easiest-to-use visualization tool on the market.
But don’t take our word for it.
See the R2 version in action and find out how you can save more time and more data than ever before. This Webinar will feature a brief 15-minute demonstration followed by a Q&A session.
The webinar is now available online for web streaming, and narrated by Durrell Rittenberg, Ph.D. You can view it here.
Tecplot today announced a new version of “Tecplot RS 2009″, Release 2. Tecplot RS is their Reservoir simulation Visualization & Analysis tool, used mostly by oil and gas companies.
“We re basically combining quantitative results and visual data analysis into a single easy-to-view snapshot ” said Roberts. “That s a powerful tool for identifying the valid models.” CIO CTO & Developer Resources Other new capabilities in the R2 version of Tecplot RS 2009 include the ability to load and display inactive cells in grid plots. In addition axis controls allow users to specify the spacing of major and minor markers for the axes of XY plots on a per-variable basis. Tecplot RS stores these settings automatically for each variable making them persistent and available whenever a variable is assigned to a plot axis.
Pricing starts at $6,000 and it’s available for Windows and Linux, 32 & 64 bit.
I have to admit, I’ve never been a big fan of TecPlot. However, a new demo video from them of their “Tecplot Chorus” tool shows an amazing capability of taking a suite of simulation runs (over 100) and quickly loading them into a single tool for easy comparison processing, all in under 2 minutes.
A new tool from Tecplot today called “
Tecplot has a great case-study from Continuum Dynamics about their use of Tecplot360 to create a ship air-wake database to be used in helping Helicopters landing on ships. Using TecPlot not only for its CFD capabilities but it’s visualization support as well, they have a few great paragraphs towards the bottom about their analysis procedures.
The US Army Corps of Engineers has several projects involved with maintaining the nations waterways, everything from hydroelectric power to fisheries. A project by Dr. Andy Goodwin statistically analyzes fish behaviour through common thoroughfares and dams, trying to find better models for routing them around dangerous areas. The TecPlot blog discusses how he’s integrated TecPlog360 into his CFD systems.
Over at the Tecplot blog, Scott Imlay (Director of Research at Tecplot Inc) discusses a bit of what he saw at the recent VisWeek conference and in particular the “Stream Lines as Tangent Curves of a Derived Vector Field” paper by Tino Weinkauf and Holger Theisel.
Researchers at Wright State University have been closely analyzing the flight patterns and aerodynamics of dragonflies in attempts to recreate the effect in a computer simulation. After several years of painstaking research, they’ve finally developed a working simulation that they visualized using TecPlot.
Tecplot has just released the new 2010 version of their Tecplot RS product for people working in reservoir simulation and research.
TecPlot held a special webinar yesterday where they demonstrated some of the new features in the upcoming 360 2009 R2.
VizWorld.com 
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