Release Notes 3.0

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ParaView 3.0 Release Notes

Hi folks,

Kitware, Sandia National Laboratories and CSimSoft are proud to announce the release of ParaView 3.0. We have been working hard for over a year and released nine alpha snapshots and one beta last month. Finally, we are satisfied with the functionality and stability to release 3.0.

User Interface

Probably the most noticeable change between ParaView 2.6 and 3.0 is the new user interface. We rewrote it from scratch using Qt from Trolltech. This was not a simple replacement of the user interface code based on a different GUI toolkit. Instead, we re-architectured our code base to follow a model/view design pattern. This architecture facilitates code reuse as well as creation of multiple client applications. For example, ParaView 3 ships with a Qt-based client as well as a python client. You will probably notice right away our new icons, toolbars, multiple detachable inspector panels (look under the View menu) and a tree-based pipeline browser. The new pipeline browser replaces the flat source list and mini pipeline view that were in previous versions. It can represent complex visualization pipelines very well and is much more informative. We also added more toolbars to allow easy access to commonly performed operations such as choosing the representation and the array to color by. Another important addition is the new chart views implemented with Qt. We currently support line and bar charts. The appropriate chart is automatically displayed when a filter that produces a 1D dataset is applied (for example Probe Over Line). You can also select one of these charts when creating a new view.

Also thanks to Qt, ParaView now uses Carbon on the Mac (i.e. it is a native Aqua application) instead of running under X11. Some of us even own Macs now (except Utkarsh, he stubbornly sticks with Linux).

Quantitative Analysis

Starting this release, we will be focusing heavily on quantitative analysis functionality in addition to qualitative. A few features along this line are selection, extraction, element inspector and a suite of data analysis filters.

As part of ParaView 3, we developed a new selection infrastructure in VTK (for technical details, see this wiki page . Users can now select surface cells by single-clicking or drawing a rubber band in a view. The selected cells are highlighted (blame Berk for choosing pink as the selection color) and their values are displayed in the element inspector. This selection can then be extracted by applying an Extract Selection (cell) filter to the selection source. The panel of the extraction filter allows further manipulation of the selection. Users can also add cells (or point using Extract Selection (point)) to be extracted manually on the property panel.

The element inspector is a convenient way of analyzing selections and extracted data. You can bring it up by selecting Element Inspector from the View menu. The data values of the current selection or the result of the selected extraction filter is displayed in the element inspector in a tabular form. We will expand the functionality of the element inspector to display the data values of any dataset (of any size) in ParaView 3.2.

Filters related to data analysis are grouped under Data Analysis in the filters menu for convenience. These filters include calculator, histogram (new in 3.0), variable integration (can also be used to compute area/volume), plot over time, probe at location and programmable filter. The programmable filter allows users to write VTK python scripts that are then executed on the input dataset. This is a neat way to add your own python algorithms to ParaView. Keep in mind that the programmable filter is executed on the server side, on the distributed data! See this wiki page for details.

Multi-View Support

ParaView finally support multiple views (I hear cheers in the background). You can split views horizontally or vertically, destroy, maximize/restore them, change their types and swap two views by dragging the title bar of one view into the title bar of another. It all works in stand-alone mode as well as client/server mode (meaning: the server can now render multiple views in a distributed manner). For some technical details go here. The current view types include 3D, XY plots and bar charts. We are working on an architecture to make it easier to create new view types (even as plugins) so expect more of them to come in the future.


A new cool feature in ParaView is linking of properties. This is covered more below but I would like to note here that it is possible to link the interaction of 3D views. Simply right-click in any 3D window to bring up the context menu and select Link Camera. Then, select another view. Voila. Two views are now linked and the view position is always the same on both.

Undo/Redo

Another very important new feature is undo/redo support. It is now possible to undo and redo pretty much any operation you perform in ParaView. There are two types of undo/redo stacks: data related and camera related. Changes made to the data pipeline (for example, changes to parameters, deletion of a filter etc,) can be undone/redone using Edit -> Undo, Edit -> Redo or the corresponding toolbar buttons. Whereas, changes made to the camera can be undone/redone using Edit -> Undo Camera, Edit->Redo Camera or by using the corresponding buttons on the toolbar of the view. There is an independent camera undo stack for each view.

It is important to note that undo/redo does not involve data caching. Therefore, undo/redo operations may cause filter re-execution in certain situations.

Server Connection

We have also re-architectured the way the client connects to the server. By default, the ParaView client creates a "built-in server". This means that, by default, ParaView acts as a self-contained visualization application and works on the local machine. To connect to a server, use File->Connect. This brings up a connection dialog. You will notice that this dialog encapsulates some of the command line arguments that were previously required and makes it much easier to setup a connection. It can even use ssh to start the server automatically. The connection module in ParaView 3 is very configurable. See this and this wiki pages for details.

Lookmarks and Custom Filters

The lookmarks went through a complete rewrite and are now much tightly integrated with the application. You can create a lookmark by simply clicking on lookmark button located on the view title bar. This will capture a screenshot and create a lookmark icon using it. You can apply the lookmark using this button. Also, check out the lookmark browser and the lookmark inspector (under View menu). We are working on extending lookmarks to also include multi-view configurations and more.

Custom filters are similar to lookmarks in that they allow users to save part of the visualization pipeline for re-use later. However, unlike a lookmark, a custom filter acts as a single filter even if it actually contains a complicated pipeline. This feature is still in development and will become fully mature in 3.2. Lookmarks and custom filters will make our lives easier by reducing tedious tasks that we commonly perform to one click.

Python Scripting

As of ParaView 3.0, we have abandoned Tcl in favor of Python. We believe that Python is better supported, is more widely used among scientific community and is much richer in functionality. Python is also object-oriented and allows us to expose the ParaView API in a more natural manner. The Python interface can be either accessed using the Python shell (Tools -> Python shell) or the Python client (pvpython). Both of these have access to the same API through the paraview module. See the ParaView wiki for more information.

Time Support and Animation

We have spent a lot of quality time in the guts of VTK to improve time support. VTK pipeline now supports time natively and using this functionality, we were able to unify all time handling to the animation control. Furthermore, we were able to either clean-up existing time-aware filters (extraction over time, for example) or write new ones (for example, particle path integration, coming in 3.2). The current time value is now set on the animation inspector (or the toolbar). This control supports three different way of incrementing time: uniform step, real time and snap to time steps. A few small animations features worth mentioning are:

  • Animation of multiple views, including movie generation
  • Support for mpeg4 encoding
  • A threshold for the animation cache

Miscellaneous

A few other new features worth mentioning are:

  • Color maps: It is now possible to create, load and save color maps that have more than two end-points
  • Plugin changes: We rewrote the plugin support from scratch. There is no longer a need to write two separate XML configuration files (one for server manager, one for GUI). Also, plugins can now do a lot more, including extending the GUI. See this page for details.
  • New testing framework. We had to re-write our testing framework as well since the previous one depended on Tcl and trace files neither of which are supported. The new testing framework supports recording of user events in XML or Python (more information).
  • State files are no longer Tcl scripts. We use XML files that can be loaded from the GUI or the Python client. These XML files will also be compatible with other applications based on ParaView architecture. Furthermore, as of 3.0, we are introducing a compatibility layer that we hope will minimize the pain of moving state files from one version to another.
  • Online help is now accessible under Help -> Help. This includes an overview of different GUI elements as well as automatically generated help for all readers, filters and writers.
  • It is now possible to link property values together. For example, you can link the resolution of a cone with the phi-resolution of a sphere (don't ask me why). This is a very useful feature that we plan to improve on in the feature. See the wiki for details.
  • Better transparency with depth peeling. If you are one of

the lucky, recent GPU owners, you will notice huge improvement in the quality of transparency.

  • Improved volume rendering of 3D images.
  • Improved multi-block and AMR support. Expect to see more improvements in this in the near future.

ParaView 3.0 (beta)

Hi Folks,

Kitware, Sandia National Laboratories and CSimSoft are proud to announce the release of ParaView 3.0 beta. You can download it from http://paraview.org/HTML/Download.html. This is our first candidate for the 3.0 release. We hope to release 3.0 in 2 weeks. I will post more detailed release notes at that time. For now, you can find release notes from previous alpha releases here: http://paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView_III_snapshots and some more information about ParaView 3 here: http://paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView_III

Have fun.

March snapshot - ParaView 2.9.9 (alpha)

Download Links

Source code

Checkout using CVS: 

> cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@paraview.org:/cvsroot/ParaView3 login
CVS password: paraview
> cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@paraview.org:/cvsroot/ParaView3 co -r ParaView-2-9-March ParaView3

Announcement

Hi Folks,

Berk has posted the March snapshot of ParaView III.

This snapshot includes binaries for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X (intel only). The source can be obtained through CVS.

Here are some the things we have been working on:

  • Support for Plugins: ParaView 3 provides a much more powerful plugin support than that provided by ParaView 2. Examples are provided along with the source (in ParaView3/Examples/Plugins). Detailed documentation is available at http://www.paraview.org/Wiki/Plugin_HowTo
  • Extended Animation support: ParaView 3 now makes it possible to animate Camera, Cut/Clip planes etc. There is no track editor at this point.
  • Selection: We are working on improving the selection mechanism. Currently users can select cells/points by ids, location, or thresholds. Surface as well as frustum selections through the data are now possible.
  • Plotting: Plot views are now a part of the main view. Splitting a view no longer creates a 3D render view by default. User can change the view type by right clicking on the view's title bar. Any 1D rectilinear grid data can now be plotted either as a XY line plot or a Bar chart.
  • Improved dialog for editing color lookup tables.
  • Xdmf Reader: Support for reading Xdmf files has now been enabled.

What is coming next month:

  • More selection enahancements.
  • Fixes/improvements to the Undo/Redo framework.
  • Volume rendering interface
  • Improved color map editor

On another note, ParaView 3 now requires Qt 4.2.2 to build.

There is still very little documentation. Look at http://www.paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView_III to get more information on the new features. We will continue adding more documentation to this page as we progress. We started working on Qt assistant based online documentation. It will be available soon.

Have fun.

February snapshot - ParaView 2.9.8 (alpha)

Download Links

Source code

Checkout using CVS: 

> cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@paraview.org:/cvsroot/ParaView3 login
CVS password: paraview
> cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@paraview.org:/cvsroot/ParaView3 co -r ParaView-2-9-February ParaView3

Announcement

Hi Folks,

I posted the January snapshot of ParaView III.

This snapshot includes binaries for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X (intel only, I will start posting ppc binaries again next month). The source can be obtained through CVS.

Here are some the things we have been working on:

  • Animation support: ParaView 3 has now an animation panel very similar to ParaView 2. There is not track editor at this point.
  • Improved time support: We are working on integrating recent time-support changes in the VTK pipeline to ParaView. You will notice that some of the readers no longer have a time step property. This is because the time editing capabilities are moving to the animation panel.
  • Improved python support including client-side delivery. The python API is evolving very rapidly, once it matures, we will post documentation.
  • Property and camera linking. This is a very cool feature. Check the wiki for documentation.

What is coming next month:

  • Lookmark support
  • Much improved 2D plotting support
  • Volume rendering interface
  • Improved color map editor
  • Plugins

On another note, ParaView 3 now requires Qt 4.2.2 to build.

There is still very little documentation. Look at http://www.paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView_III to get more information on the new features. We will continue adding more documentation to this page as we progress. We started working on Qt assistant based online documentation. It will be available soon.

Have fun.

January snapshot - ParaView 2.9.7 (alpha)

Download Links

Source code

Checkout using CVS: 

> cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@paraview.org:/cvsroot/ParaView3 login
CVS password: paraview
> cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@paraview.org:/cvsroot/ParaView3 co -r ParaView-2-9-January ParaView3

Announcement

Hi Folks,

I posted the January snapshot of ParaView III. 

This snapshot includes binaries for Windows, Linux (32 and 64 bit) and
Mac OS X. The source can be obtained through CVS.

Here are some the things we have been working on:

* Improved python support. We added a programmable python filter. The
python source can be entered on the object inspector.
* Better default values for the object inspector. These are computed
based on the input. For example, the default maximum length of the
streamlines is now computed based on the input size.
* Pipeline browser improvements:
  - it is now possible to change inputs as well as add multiple
inputs to filters that support it
* Further GUI improvements
* First pass at annotation: we added a text source. This allows
creation of an arbitrary number of labels on the display. The text can
be moved by clicking and dragging. There are some glitches with the
interaction. We will fix this soon.

There is still very little documentation. Look at
http://www.paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView_III to get more information on the new
features. We will continue adding more documentation to this page as
we progress. We will also start working on online documentation this month.

Have fun.

December snapshot - ParaView 2.9.6 (alpha)

Download Links

Source code

Checkout using CVS: 

> cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@paraview.org:/cvsroot/ParaView3 login
CVS password: paraview
> cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@paraview.org:/cvsroot/ParaView3 co -r ParaView-2-9-December ParaView3

Announcement

Hi Folks,

I posted the December snapshot of ParaView III. 

This snapshot includes binaries for Windows, Linux (32 and 64 bit) and
Mac OS X. The source can be obtained through CVS.

Here are some the things we have been working on:

* Reading multiple exodus files.
* Many property panel improvements and fixes.
* File dialog fixes.
* Improved chart code.
* Improved testing framework, which now includes python.
* Improved pipeline browser.
* Play/Pause in VCR controls.
* Light Kit controls added.
* Auto generated and custom panel improvements.
* More robust server connection, w/ feedback.
* File dialog improvements.

There is still very little documentation. Look at
http://www.paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView_III to get more information on the new
features. We will continue adding more documentation to this page as
we progress. We will also start working on online documentation in
January.

November snapshot - ParaView 2.9.5 (alpha)

Download Links

Source code

Checkout using CVS: 

> cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@paraview.org:/cvsroot/ParaView3 login
CVS password: paraview
> cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@paraview.org:/cvsroot/ParaView3 co -r ParaView-2-9-November ParaView3

Announcements

Hi Folks,

Due to IEEE Vis and Supercomputing conferences, we were late putting
out a snapshot this month. 
This is mostly a bug fix release. Some the new features and fixes include:

* Reading multiple exodus files.
* Many property panel improvements and fixes.
* File dialog fixes.
* Improved chart code.
* Improved testing framework, which now includes python.

October snapshot - ParaView 2.9.4 (alpha)

Download Links

Source code

Checkout using CVS: 

> cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@paraview.org:/cvsroot/ParaView3 login
CVS password: paraview
> cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@paraview.org:/cvsroot/ParaView3 co -r ParaView-2-9-October ParaView3

Announcements

Hi Folks,

I posted the October snapshot of ParaView III. 

This snapshot includes binaries for Windows, Linux (32 and 64 bit) and Mac OS X.
I did not post the source because the CVS repository is now open to anonymous
access (yey!). Follow the instructions on the page to checkout the source from CVS.

New features to look for include:

* Addition of Display and Information tabs similar to ParaView 2. We are still
trying to decide what to do with these pages so the way they work may change in
the future. It is still possible to access the statistics page from
View->Statistics View and the display page from the contextual menu of
individual pipeline elements (right click -> Display Settings). We would love
feedback on this.
* Layout and geometry is not stored at exit and restored at startup.
* Improved property pages for readers and filters
* Preliminary support for plots. The first plot view we added is a bar plot
view. This is used only for histograms. To try it out, follow these steps:
   - Create a sphere from the sources menu
   - Apply the histogram filter (Filters->Test->ExtractHistogram)
   - Create a histogram view (Edit->Add Plot->Histogram)
   - Select the new view by clicking on it
   - Turn the visibility of the histogram filter on by clicking on the eye icon
We are working on making this process simpler :-)

There is still very little documentation. Look at
http://www.paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView_III to get more information on the new
features. We will continue adding more documentation to this page as we progress.

Enjoy.

September snapshot - ParaView 2.9.3 (alpha)

Download Links

Announcement

Hi Folks,

I posted the September snapshot of ParaView III. 

This snapshot includes binaries for Windows, Linux (32 and 64 bit) and Mac OS X. 
For those who have issues running the binaries, who cannot find the binary for their 
system or who want to see/modify the source code, source archives are also included.

New features to look out for include:

* Improved multi-view support:
  Try creating, destroying, maximizing, restoring and moving views. To move a
  view, click on it's toolbar and drag onto another view's toolbar.
* Improved server connection and start dialog
* Improved selection:
  Try turning on the element inspector before selecting,
  (View -> Element Inspector)
* More toolbar buttons including those for manipulating camera. Better icons are
  coming soon
* Separate camera undo/redo buttons for each view
* Dialog for changing application and view settings (Edit -> Settings)
* Capability to disconnect from server while saving an animation

Also check out:

* Custom filter dialog (tutorial coming)
* Undo/redo
* Custom reader/filter panels (try exodos reader, cut and clip)
* Python scripting

There is still very little documentation. Look at 
http://www.paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView_III to get more information on the 
new features. We will continue adding more documentation to this page as 
we progress.

August snapshot - ParaView 2.9.2 (alpha)

Download Links


Announcement

Hi Folks,

I posted the August snapshot of ParaView. You can download it here: (see links above)

...

We regularly compile and run Windows, Linux and MacOS X.

Please note that this is a development snapshot and may contain bugs. We have
removed some of the limitations in this snapshot. It is now possible to access
some of the features in development including multiple frames, all
readers/sources/filters, python shell (requires compilation from source).

There is still very little documentation. We will focus on that before the
actual release.

-Berk

July snapshot - ParaView 2.9.1 (alpha)

Download Links

Announcement

Hi Folks,

I posted the june snapshot of ParaView 2.9 (to be 3.0) on the web. 
There are binaries for linux (x86) and windows. Make sure you download 2.9.1.
2.9.0 is the snapshot from May. I also uploaded an exodus file
(disk_out_ref.exo). It is good file to play with to see some of the new features.

Some new features to look for (in no particular order):

* Support for more file formats (exodus reader is still the one that is tested
and customized best)
* Statistics view
* Two undo/redo stacks: 1. pipeline operations (ctrl+z, ctrl+r) 2. view
operation (ctrl+b, ctrl+f)
* Visibility control on the pipeline inspector
* Selection (still at alpha, use toolbar buttons or 's' key to switch between
interaction & selection)
* Support for more sources
* Support for contour and streamlines filters
* Support for saving & loading state
* Saving screenshot
* Saving animation. Very alpha. It only support creating animations from readers
that support time (File->Save Animation)
* Bug fixes

We are working on:

* Readers/filters
* Custom filters (being able to create custom filters by selection part of a
pipeline, saving, loading and instantiating them)
* Full featured animation
* Colormap editor
* Application/3D view settings
* Python interface
* Selection
* Server connection interface

Longer term:

* Support for multiple views
* Client side plotting using Qt widgets (2D plots, histogram)
* Multiple server connection
* Multiple client connection

Some of these features are already in alpha stage and are enabled in the CVS
development tree. I disabled them to make binaries. Use the snapshots and CVS at
your own risk. I would not recommend using 2.9 for production use. Bug reports
are obviously welcome.

June snapshot - ParaView 2.9.0 (alpha)

Download Link

Announcement

Kitware, Sandia National Labs and Elemental Technologies have been working on
ParaView 3.0 for a few months. ParaView 3.0 will have a myriad of new features
including a brand new interface. This interface is based on the Qt library
(http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt) and is designed to be easy to use and
elegant. Paraview 3.0 will also have a greatly expanded emphasis on quantitative
analysis, with lots of plotting, graphing, and linked views. We have our first
development snapshot.

Currently, we are working on a separate CVS repository so the source code for
the Qt interface is not yet available. We will open this CVS repository soon and
we will merge the two repositories sometime in the future, most probably before
the release of ParaView 2.6 in Q4 of 2006.

Please keep in mind that this is not even a beta but more a development
snapshot. We expect the development will take several more months. Comments and
feedback are as usual welcome.

Regards,
ParaView Team
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