ParaView Release Notes

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ParaView 3.6.1

The ParaView 3.6.1 release is now available for download from the ParaView web site (http://paraview.org). It is also available through CVS; the tag is ParaView-3-6-1. This release includes several new features along with plenty of bug fixes addressing a multitude of usability and stability issues including those affecting parallel volume rendering. For a more exhaustive list, please refer to http://paraview.org/Bug/roadmap_page.php

Based on user feedback, ParaView's Python API has undergone a major overhaul. The new simplified scripting interface makes it easier to write procedural scripts mimicking the steps users would follow when using the GUI to perform tasks such as creating sources, applying filters, etc. Details on the new scripting API can be found on the Paraview Wiki.

We have been experimenting with adding support for additional file formats such as CGNS, Silo, Tecplot using VisIt plugins. Since this is an experimental feature, only the Linux binaries distributed from our website support these new file formats.

ParaView now natively supports tabular data-structures thus improving support for CSV files including importing CSV files as point-sets or structured grids. We have completely redesigned the charting/plotting components with several performance fixes as well as usability improvements. It is possible to plot arrays from arbitrary datasets directly using Plot Data filter. Upon hovering over the plots tooltips are shown which detail the plotted values.

In an effort to better support animations involving the camera, we have added support for specifying camera movements along splines or for orbiting around objects in space. This version has many GUI usability improvements including, but definitely not limited to: • Color palettes which make it easier to switch between color schemes that are suitable for printing and for screen. • Improved support for temporal readers and filters. • Axes annotations and scalar bar for 2D render view. • Zooming to selected region in 3D view. • Quick launch for creating sources and filters using Ctrl+Space or Alt+Space.

Apart from these enhancements, ParaView includes a pre-alpha release of OverView, an application developed using the ParaView application framework. OverView is a generalization of the ParaView scientific visualization application designed to support the ingestion, processing and display of informatics data. The ParaView client-server architecture provides a mature framework for performing scalable analysis on distributed memory platforms, and OverView uses these capabilities to analyze informatics problems that are too large for individual workstations. This application still contains many experimental features and is not yet documented, but feel free to try it out and report bugs and feature requests.

StreamingParaView, another application developed using the ParaView application framework. StreamingParaView processes structured datasets in a piecewise fashion, on one or many processors. Because the entire dataset is never loaded into memory at once, StreamingParaView makes it possible to visualize large datasets on machines that have insufficient RAM to do so otherwise. Piece culling, reordering and caching preserve ParaView's normally high interactivity while streaming. This application still contains many experimental features and is not yet documented, but we encourage users to try it out and report bugs and feature requests.

Currently, both OverView and StreamingParaView are available through source alone.

Bugs, feature requests and any questions or issues can be posted to the ParaView Mailing List at paraview@paraview.org.

As always, we rely on your feedback to make ParaView better and powerful. We are experimenting with a new user-feedback mechanism. Please use http://paraview.uservoice.com/ or click on the "Tell us what you think" link of www.paraview.org to leave your feedback and vote for new features.

ParaView 3.4.0

The ParaView 3.4 release is now available for download from the ParaView web site (http://paraview.org). It is also available through CVS; the tag is ParaView-3-4-0. Since the 3.2 release, we have been focusing on usability and 3.4 contains many improvements and bug fixes.

The major changes since 3.4 are:

  • VTK and ParaView are now licensed under the BSD license as opposed to modified BSD.
  • The multi*block and AMR support was improved significantly. Almost all filters, spreadsheet view and charts now support these datasets.
  • The selection capabilities of ParaView were significantly improved. For details, see Kitware Source, issue 6 or http://paraview.org/Wiki/Data_Selection.
  • Some of other improvements and fixes are

New features

  • Added support for plotting multiple point/cell values over time.
  • Save screenshot now allows saving of all views.
  • It is not possible to save higher resolution screenshots.
  • Added support for picking end*points of lines widgets (used in plot over line and streamlines) using 'p'.
  • Added support for scene exporters. Supported formats are X3D (binary and ascii), VRML 2 and POV (Persistence of Vision Raytracer).
  • Added ability to open multiple CTH and Exodus restart files.
  • Added temporal statistics filter that can be used to find average, min, max and standard deviation of arrays over time.
  • Added support for choosing (picking) custom center of rotation.
  • Added volume rendering support for multi*block datasets. The user now chooses which block to volume render.
  • Added filter to append all blocks of a multi*block dataset to one unstructured grid. Can be used to volume render the whole multi*block dataset.
  • Added support to color by block.
  • Added 2D views / slice representation for volumes (vtkImageData).
  • Added box and sphere widgets for slicing and clipping.
  • Added cube axes that can be used to show scale of a dataset.
  • Added support to color by AMR level.
  • Added support to turn on/off the visibility of multiple objects. Select multiple objects in the pipeline browser and click on one of the eyeballs.
  • Added multiple selection using ctrl (command on Mac). When performing selection after the first time, hold ctrl to add to the existing selection.
  • Added "Normal Glyphs" custom filter.
  • Added "zoom" to individual arrays in the spreadsheet view. Double*click on the title*bar to activate/deactivate.
  • Added support for displaying textures on polygonal data.

Improvements to Existing Features

  • Plugin improvements. See the plugin page on the wiki for more information. http://www.paraview.org/Wiki/Plugin_HowTo
  • Added option to disable offscreen rendering while saving images. This option should be turned on if ParaView crashes when saving images. This is to get around an OpenGL bug that is on some Linux Intel drivers.
  • Added option to disable depth peeling when rendering translucent geometry. Some graphics card drivers claim to support everything that is needed for depth peeling while not implementing them. If you are experience crashes when transparency is on, disable depth peeling.
  • Added easily accessible menu to select the component of a vector to color by.
  • Added support for plotting more than one component of a vector on the same chart.
  • Plot over line now works with multi*block and AMR data.
  • CTH reader now combines X, Y and Z velocity components into a vector.
  • Added button to rescale to data range in bar charts.
  • Changed the default width of the scalar bar to a more reasonable size. Also tweaked the way scalar bar scaling works.
  • Improved partial array support (when an array exists only in some of the blocks of a multi*block dataset).
  • Added selection support for composite datasets.
  • Added chooser for unstructured volume rendering algorithm.
  • Added support for selecting array in gradient filter for image data. Removed gradient magnitude. Use gradient + array calculator.
  • Many comparative view fixes.
  • Many tiled*display fixes.
  • Many widgets used a few digit precision for floating point numbers making it impossible to use higher precision. Fixed.

Reader and Writer Improvements

  • Added readers for MFIX and Fluent files to the GUI.
  • Added support for loading file series from the command line as well as from the recent file menu.
  • Added SILO reader. Needs more work. Needs compilation from source due to Silo license (it is not open-source).
  • Added support to save multi*block polygonal datasets as a collection of STL or PLY files.
  • Added support for file series of XML based VTK files.
  • Updated XDMF reader to XDMF 2.

Bug Fixes

  • Point coordinates were not shown in the spreadsheet view if there were no point arrays. Fixed.
  • Calculator function was not reloaded with state. Fixed.
  • Annotation text was not scaling properly when rendering high*resolution animations/images. Fixed.
  • Color by menu was not updated in some cases. Fixed.
  • CTH reader was not handling missing files gracefully. Fixed.
  • Selection inspector could not display labels for global element ids. Fixed.
  • Loading state reseted to time step 0, fixed.
  • Pipeline was not always updating when time was shifted. Fixed.
  • Fixed crash when using Edit *> Delete All.
  • Fixed installation with VTK_USE_RPATH on.
  • Selection did not work in parallel if compositing was off. Fixed.
  • Selection labels were not updated during animation. Fixed.
  • Several undo/redo fixes.

ParaView 3.2

Release notes for 3.1 (development version) and 3.2 can be found here.

ParaView 3.0

Release notes for development snapshots and 3.0 can be found here.

ParaView 2.6

Release notes for ParaView 2.6 can be found here.

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