VisIt - Introduction

VisIt is a free interactive parallel visualization and graphical analysis tool for viewing scientific data on Unix and PC platforms. Users can quickly generate visualizations from their data, animate them through time, manipulate them, and save the resulting images for presentations. VisIt contains a rich set of visualization features so that you can view your data in a variety of ways. It can be used to visualize scalar and vector fields defined on two- and three-dimensional (2D and 3D) structured and unstructured meshes. VisIt was designed to handle very large data set sizes in the tera- to peta-scale range and yet can also handle small data sets in the kilobyte range. More about VisIt here

Installation Notes

Notes:

• The version of VisIt on CSDMS HPCC and on your local machine should be the same. The VisIt version running on CSDMS HPCC is 2.3.0. Download VisIt 2.3.0 appropriate for your Operating System from here. (you will need to scroll down to find this version).

Installation Notes:

• For Mac & Unix
  • Download VisIt 2.3.0 appropriate for your Operating System from here.
    • Under downloads there will be a ".dmg" file which you can double click. In the Finder window you will have the tar file and the install script.

Note: Some browsers immediately will untar the tarred visit file, whereas the script expects to find an tarred file. Make sure that when you are prompted about unarchiving that you do not choose that option, but instead save the archived file.

Note: It is convenient to have the downloaded file and the script in the same folder (In this case it is home folder)

• • To run the script type in the following into your terminal window

For Mac 10.6.8:

>> cd ~
>> chmod 700 visit-install
>> mkdir visit
>> ./visit-install 2.3.0 darwin-x86_64 ./visit

Installation of VisIt starts here. Choose '1' if you don't want to add profiles on remote computer. Then after that it asks 'Do you need to use a bank when submitting parallel jobs to a batch system?'. Incase of CMT the answer is no so you type in 'n' To move visit to your Applications folder

mv ./visit /Applications

Congratulations! You have successfully installed VisIt.

• • Run VisIt

cd /Applications/visit/bin
./visit &

OR If visit were installed in the directory "/Applications/visit", then the following commands would set your path appropriately.

>> cd
>> echo "set path = ($path /Applications/visit/bin)" >> .cshrc

• • To run VisIt type “visit” on the command prompt
• CMT setup for VisIt
  • Open CMT, Goto File --> Preferences and enter the following values as shown below.

>> VisIt
Path(local):

The
path
to
your
local
VisIt
installation.(/Applications/visit)

For more information read this: This will unpack the downloaded tar file and install VisIt in the specified directory. Note that it can create a new distribution directory or update an existing distribution. This is handled automatically. The command to run the script is,

>> visit-install "version" "platform" "directory"

where,

• • • "version" will be 2.3.0 for the current distribution.
    • "platform" will be one of the following: aix, aix64-xlc, darwin, irix6, linux-altix, linux-ia64, linux-x86_64, linux_chaos, linux_rhel3, osf1, or sunos5 depending on the machine. The one you use should match the name of the accompanying distribution file.
    • "directory" is the directory you wish to install visit into. If the directory doesn't exist the script will create it.
    • For example: visit-install 2.3.0 darwin-i386 /Applications/visit.

Note that you will need to have the file "visit2.3.0.darwin-i386.tar.gz" present in the current directory for this to function properly.

• • Add the bin directory below the installation directory (/Applications/visit/bin in our example) to each user's search path. The best way to do this is to add it to the user's .cshrc file. The bin directory contains the visit script which starts VisIt. It can be run on many machines. The script determines the type of machine it is running on and starts the appropriate executable.
• For Windows
  • Copy the file visit2.3.0.exe to your desktop.
  • Double click on the visit2.3.0.exe icon to run the installer.
  • Follow the directions provided by the installer.