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Comment: Moved Franklin section before Lens. Removed plugin config, because it's not needed.

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Client-Server remote Visualization

Remote

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To run a ParaView client on your local machine, and connect that to a parallel ParaView server running on Lens, you need to do some one-time-only setup before you can connect in the usual way.

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Parallel Visualization on Franklin at NERSC

Setting up on Franklin (one time only):

  1. Configure your ParaView Client to know about the server on Franklin at NERSC
    1. Download http:
    go to http:
    1. //www.
    paraview
    1. slac.stanford.
    org
    1. edu/
    files
    1. ~schussma/
    v3.8/ and download the appropriate "ParaView-3.8.0-RC1" for your platform. It
    1. Franklin_community.pvsc server configuration file and save a copy local to your desktop machine.
    2. Edit your copy of Franklin_community.pvsc to change the single occurrence of the word "zebra" to your Franklin login name.
    3. On your desktop machine, run paraview 3.8.1 (must be 3.8.
    0, and must be RC1, because that is what matches what is already installed on lens. Install this client on your system.
  2. save a copy of lens.pvsc on your machine as well.
    • (If your username on your local machine does not match your username on lens, edit the lens.pvsc file, change
      • <Argument value="lens.ccs.ornl.gov"/> to include your lens username:
      • <Argument value=username@lens.ccs.ornl.gov"\> and change
      • <Server name="Lens" resource .... to
      • <Server name="Lens-Username" resource ... FIXME (left off here)
  3. run ParaView 3.8.0-RC1 on your machine
  4. Configure your local plugins.
    1. Tools -> Manage Plugins
      1. Under "Local Plugins", select "SLACTools" and hit "Load Selected" if it's not already loaded. Also, click the grep triangle next to "SLACTools" to expand a menu, and make sure "Auto Load" is checked so that you don't have to repeat this every time you run ParaView.
      2. You may want to do the same for "CSCS_PointSpritePlugin", which is useful particle visualization (though it doesn't presently work on Mac).
  5. connect to lens
    1. Press the "Connect" button in the main controls toolbar.
      1. press the "Load Servers" button.
      2. Navigate to your "lens.pvsc" file, select it, and hit "OK".
    2. Under "Choose a Server" you should now see "lens". Select that and hit "Connect".
    3. A dialogue will pop up. The defaults are probably ok. Don't select less than 16 for "Number of Cores", because that makes the X11 server unhappy for some reason. Hit "Connect".
    4. Two more windows should open up, one of which is an X terminal. In it, enter your lens passcode.

Tips and Tricks

Re-sampling Volume Data to a Planar Uniform Rectilinear Grid

Occasionally it is useful to re-sample unstructured data to a structured grid. For example, this can be used to export data in a form more usable by other software.

  1. Load the mesh and mode as usual, making sure that "Read Internal Volume" is enabled.
  2. Set up an appropriate mesh view.
    1. Hide the External Surface and show the Entire Volume (click the corresponding eye icons).
    2. Set External Surface drawing style to Surface if it isn't already (might default to Outline, which appears as a wireframe box)
    3. Set the surface to display a field you are interested in (so you can know that you will orient the sampling plane correctly)
    4. Select "Entire Volume" so that text is highlighted
  3. Create the sampling filter
    1. create the filter: "Filters -> Alphabetical -> Plane Glyphs". This will show a wireframe bounding box and a red outline for the plane orientation.
    2. Position the plane where you want it. The most consistent and repeatable way to do this is to put values in for "Center" and "Normal" which specify a point in the plane and the plane's normal vector, respectively. Change "Resolution" to 100, and hit "Apply"
  4. (Optionally) Save the data
    1. Presumably, this re-sampled data is to be exported, so make sure that only the re-sample filter is active and visible in the Pipeline Browser, then
    2. "File -> Save Data", type in a file name, set "Files of Type" to be "CSV" (Comma Separated Values) which is readable by spreadsheets and Matlab. Hit "OK".
    3. For "Configure Writer", you probably don't want to Write All Time Steps. And "Field Association" should be "Points". Hit "OK". (The file should be written to the same directory from which you originally ran ParaView, unless you navigated elsewhere.)

Remote Parallel Visualization on Franklin at NERSC

Setup (one time only):

  1. Configure your ParaView Client to know about the server on Franklin at NERSC
    1. Download http://www.slac.stanford.edu/~schussma/Franklin_community.pvsc server configuration file and save a copy local to your desktop machine.
    2. Edit your copy of Franklin_community.pvsc to change the single occurrence of the word "zebra" to your Franklin login name.
    3. On your desktop machine, run paraview 3.8.1 (must be 3.8.1 to match what's on Franklin; other versions will not work)
    4. Hit the "connect" button (with the green dot).
    5. Click "Load Servers".
      1. Browse to where you saved the attached .pvsc file, select it, hit "Ok".
      2. Select "Franklin_community" in the "Choose Server" dialog, hit "Connect".
      3. The defaults should be ok. Hit "Connect".
    6. Two dialogs will pop up ("Output Messages" and "Starting Server"). When they appear, ignore them...
    7. Instead, go to the terminal on your desktop from which you originally ran ParaView, and there type in your Franklin Password.
      1. If all is well, Franklin should respond to your password with something that looks like "7049275.nid00003".
      2. You may need to wait a minute or so more until Franklin schedules your parallel server job.
    8. When the "Starting Server" dialog disappears, you have connected successfully.
  2. Configure the SLAC plugin.
    1. go to "Tools->Manage Plugins".
      1. Look in the right panel ("Local Plugins")
        1. if "SLACTools" isn't loaded, select it and hit "Load Selected".
        2. Click the "+" next to it, and make sure "Auto Load" is checked.
      2. Look in the left panel ("Remote Plugins")
        1. Make sure "SLACTools" is loaded and set to Auto Load as well.
      3. Hit "Close", and quit ParaView. Setup is complete.

Running Paraview on Franklin (general case):

    1. 1 to match what's on Franklin; other versions will not work)
    2. Hit the "connect" button (with the green dot).
    3. Click "Load Servers".
      1. Browse to where you saved the attached .pvsc file, select it, hit "Ok".
      2. Select "Franklin_community" in the "Choose Server" dialog, hit "Connect".
      3. The defaults should be ok. Hit "Connect".
    4. Two dialogs will pop up ("Output Messages" and "Starting Server"). When they appear, ignore them...
    5. Instead, go to the terminal on your desktop from which you originally ran ParaView, and there type in your Franklin Password.
      1. If all is well, Franklin should respond to your password with something that looks like "7049275.nid00003".
      2. You may need to wait a minute or so more until Franklin schedules your parallel server job.
    6. When the "Starting Server" dialog disappears, you have connected successfully.

Running Paraview on Franklin (general case):

  1. On your desktop machine, run paraview 3.8.1 (must be 3.8.1 to match what's on Franklin; other versions will not work)
  2. Hit the "connect" button (with the green dot).
  3. Select "Franklin_community" in the "Choose Server" dialog, hit "Connect".
  4. The defaults should be ok. Hit "Connect".
    1. Two dialogs will pop up ("Output Messages" and "Starting Server"). When they appear, ignore them...
    2. Instead, go to the terminal on your desktop from which you originally ran ParaView, and there type in your Franklin Password.
    3. If all is well, Franklin should respond to your password with something that looks like "7049275.nid00003".
    4. You may need to wait a minute or so more until Franklin schedules your parallel server job.
    5. When the "Starting Server" dialog disappears, you have connected successfully.

Remote Visualization from Lens.

To run a ParaView client on your local machine, and connect that to a parallel ParaView server running on Lens, you need to do some one-time-only setup before you can connect in the usual way.

Initial Setup (one time only)

  1. go to http://www.paraview.org/files/v3.8/ and download the appropriate "ParaView-3.8.0-RC1" for your platform. It must be 3.8.0, and must be RC1, because that is what matches what is already installed on lens. Install this client on your system.
  2. save a copy of lens.pvsc on your machine as well.
    • (If your username on your local machine does not match your username on lens, edit the lens.pvsc file, change
      • <Argument value="lens.ccs.ornl.gov"/> to include your lens username:
      • <Argument value=username@lens.ccs.ornl.gov"\> and change
      • <Server name="Lens" resource .... to
      • <Server name="Lens-Username" resource ... FIXME (left off here)
  3. run ParaView 3.8.0-RC1 on your machine
  4. Configure your local plugins.
    1. Tools -> Manage Plugins
      1. Under "Local Plugins", select "SLACTools" and hit "Load Selected" if it's not already loaded. Also, click the grep triangle next to "SLACTools" to expand a menu, and make sure "Auto Load" is checked so that you don't have to repeat this every time you run ParaView.
      2. You may want to do the same for "CSCS_PointSpritePlugin", which is useful particle visualization (though it doesn't presently work on Mac).
  5. connect to lens
    1. Press the "Connect" button in the main controls toolbar.
      1. press the "Load Servers" button.
      2. Navigate to your "lens.pvsc" file, select it, and hit "OK".
    2. Under "Choose a Server" you should now see "lens". Select that and hit "Connect".
    3. A dialogue will pop up. The defaults are probably ok. Don't select less than 16 for "Number of Cores", because that makes the X11 server unhappy for some reason. Hit "Connect".
    4. Two more windows should open up, one of which is an X terminal. In it, enter your lens passcode.

Tips and Tricks

Re-sampling Volume Data to a Planar Uniform Rectilinear Grid

Occasionally it is useful to re-sample unstructured data to a structured grid. For example, this can be used to export data in a form more usable by other software.

  1. Load the mesh and mode as usual, making sure that "Read Internal Volume" is enabled.
  2. Set up an appropriate mesh view.
    1. Hide the External Surface and show the Entire Volume (click the corresponding eye icons).
    2. Set External Surface drawing style to Surface if it isn't already (might default to Outline, which appears as a wireframe box)
    3. Set the surface to display a field you are interested in (so you can know that you will orient the sampling plane correctly)
    4. Select "Entire Volume" so that text is highlighted
  3. Create the sampling filter
    1. create the filter: "Filters -> Alphabetical -> Plane Glyphs". This will show a wireframe bounding box and a red outline for the plane orientation.
    2. Position the plane where you want it. The most consistent and repeatable way to do this is to put values in for "Center" and "Normal" which specify a point in the plane and the plane's normal vector, respectively. Change "Resolution" to 100, and hit "Apply"
  4. (Optionally) Save the data
    1. Presumably, this re-sampled data is to be exported, so make sure that only the re-sample filter is active and visible in the Pipeline Browser, then
    2. "File -> Save Data", type in a file name, set "Files of Type" to be "CSV" (Comma Separated Values) which is readable by spreadsheets and Matlab. Hit "OK".
    3. For "Configure Writer", you probably don't want to Write All Time Steps. And "Field Association" should be "Points". Hit "OK". (The file should be written to the same directory from which you originally ran ParaView, unless you navigated elsewhere.)
  5. On your desktop machine, run paraview 3.8.1 (must be 3.8.1 to match what's on Franklin; other versions will not work)
  6. Hit the "connect" button (with the green dot).
  7. Select "Franklin_community" in the "Choose Server" dialog, hit "Connect".
  8. The defaults should be ok. Hit "Connect".
    1. Two dialogs will pop up ("Output Messages" and "Starting Server"). When they appear, ignore them...
    2. Instead, go to the terminal on your desktop from which you originally ran ParaView, and there type in your Franklin Password.
    3. If all is well, Franklin should respond to your password with something that looks like "7049275.nid00003".
    4. You may need to wait a minute or so more until Franklin schedules your parallel server job.
    5. When the "Starting Server" dialog disappears, you have connected successfully.

Getting Help

If you have any questions, or if something in this page is missing or unclear or incorrect, please send email to Greg Schussman schussman@slac.stanford.edu.