ParaViewWeb/FAQ

Q: What is the goal behind ParaViewWeb and Web Visualization ?

A: There is not a single answer.

• It could be to simplify the access to complex infrastructures such as clusters and load and visualize really large dataset on my laptop at home.
• To provide collaboration in the post-processing analysis.
• Have an interactive 3D content in a Web page
• View some 3D data that are hosted on a remote server without having to download them and use a complex tool to view them
• Add custom ad-hoc application in my everyday job that require some 3D data processing and visualization.

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Q: Is there any plan to provide a fully featured application similar to ParaView on the web ?

A: No, because its not our goal and even if it's fully doable. We think that with that a web application should be more user centric with a better user interaction design than ParaView that wants to be generic and answers to every needs.

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Q: How can I diagnose a problem when ParaViewWeb is not working properly ?

A: Here is two initial step that you should check.

• First of all look at the logs through the http://localhost:8080/PWService if it is working. If not, the problem is even related on the Web application deployment and has nothing to do with ParaView. Maybe, you just forget to start Tomcat or deploy the applications.
• Secondly try to execute manually the PWServer executable based on the path that is set inside TOMCAT_ROOT/lib/pw-config.properties. This shouldn't crash.

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Q: I've managed to compile ParaView and ParaViewWeb with all its dependency, but when I go on a Web application from the samples, I see the page correctly but not the 3D content of the view. What is the problem ?

A: The problem may have several reasons. Here is a set of possible failures:

• I forgot to set the WORKING_DIRECTORY at the configuration inside CMake. This directory will contains the database of the past and running session as well as the logs.
• I forget to start activemq that act as the message broker between PWServer (ParaView plugin) and PWService that run inside Tomcat.
• There is no X running on linux computer and ParaView was not compiled with OSMesa.
• When I execute the command line for PWServer (Look at the pw-config.properties to have the full path)
  • I get a Segmentation fault. You may be linking with a too recent version of ActiveMQ-CPP. It has to be (for now) the ""3.1.x"".
  • I get a library not found error. You must add into environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH / DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH / PATH (Linux/Mac/Win) the path to the dependency libraries (Directory that contains *.so, *.dylib, *.dll).

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Q: ParaViewWeb is doing remote rendering but is it going to provide WebGL rendering too ?

A: Yes. In fact, a WebGL renderer is currently under development and can be retrieved and used with the latest ParaViewWeb source code.

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Feel free to add your own questions that you want to see here... I'll try to provide an answer with an explanation.