Tecplot is sponsoring the International Conference on Model Integration across Disparate Scales in Complex Turbulent Flow Simulation (ICMIDS), June 15-17, State College, PA.

We invite you to visit Tecplot’s display for a demo or discussion of how Tecplot 360 EX handles large data files. In addition to improved performance and usability, these features have been included in recent Tecplot 360 EX releases:

• Triangulation
• Advanced streamtrace seeding
• Conditional expressions in equations
• Context toolbars
• Fourier Transforms
• Native Mac OSX support

Find out more about Tecplot 360 EX ►

Tecplot is exhibiting at the AIAA Propulsion & Energy Conference, July 27-29 in Orlando, FL. Stop by Booth #508 for a demo of the recently added features in Tecplot 360 EX. We would love to get your feedback. In addition to improved performance and usability, highlights include:

• Triangulation
• Advanced streamtrace seeding
• Conditional expressions in equations
• Context toolbars
• Fourier Transforms
• Native Mac OSX support

Find out more about Tecplot 360 EX ►

View the Recording: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/recording/307184125173761281

In this Webinar, you’ll learn how the WaterCube/Tecplot solution can help you:

• Visualize and manage real 3D spatial river data like never before.
• Measure specific volumes of water and discharge at varying flows anywhere along the river reach, providing ideal locations for instrumentation placement and stream power.
• Calibrate computer-created predictive models for higher accuracy in flood and drought conditions.
• Perform advanced hydraulic analyses that determine sediment transfer, temperature changes, quality, and the impact to the environment.

Be among the first water resource professionals to learn about a more efficient and effective way to manage our most precious natural resource.

Cubeit Professional provides advanced capabilities for Analyzing 3D spatial river data and Digital Elevation Models (DEM’s) like never before. By utilizing the power of Cubeit Professional you can move down the river analyzing slope changes, velocity contour plots, bathymetry and 2D and 3D views of the area of interest. Find out more at watercubedata.com

What Is WaterCube?

WaterCube and Tecplot have joined forces to create a Water Resource Management Solution that helps scientists and researchers acquire, process and understand complex river-system data. We want to share this first-of-its-kind solution with you!

“Understanding What’s Happening in Your River Reach” will introduce you to a unique data visualization solution that takes the power of big data and makes it usable on a mass scale, allowing you to visualize, validate and manage river, reservoir and stream data.

The Webinar was recorded on July 2, 2015.

Question: What do you get when you combine a love of baseball and natural coaching ability with business savvy and technical competency?

Answer: Tecplot’s vice president of customer development, Tom Chan.

Wearing Many Different Hats

During his nearly 20 years at Tecplot, Tom has worn many different hats. He began in the mid-90s as a sales engineer at Amtec Engineering, the company that was renamed Tecplot, Inc. in 2002. After a brief stint at blue-chip consulting firm Accenture, Tom returned to Tecplot as a product manager, eventually rising to the role of director of product management. Then, three years ago, Tom was named to the position that he holds today.

Along the way, Tom married his wife, Linda, whom he met years earlier at a Halloween Party at the University of Washington, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. “Linda attended the party as a belly dancer, so she obviously caught my attraction,” said Tom, who attended as a not-nearly-as-attractive hillbilly.

The couple has three children – 16 year-old Tyler, 13 year-old Brenden, and 10 year-old Lauren. Since each of their kids is heavily involved in youth sports, most of Tom and Linda’s off-hours are spent at various fields and courts. Not content with merely watching from afar, Tom has also coached Tyler’s baseball teams, is a past-president of Issaquah Little League, and currently serves on the board of Issaquah Select Basketball.

“I thoroughly enjoyed my time coaching youth baseball,” Tom said. “I love the strategy and tactics of the game, but more importantly, it was so rewarding to see the kids improve because some of what I taught them.”

Coaching a Key Ingredient to Success

Tom’s desire to coach is a key ingredient in the corporate success he enjoys today. “Customer Development is responsible for all aspects of customer acquisition and retention,” he explained. “As such, I often find myself working with our customers in a coaching capacity, trying to understand exactly what problems they need to solve and then helping them understand how our various software solutions can meet their needs.”

Tom’s coaching skills also benefit his Tecplot colleagues. “Because I’ve been with the company for many years and have worked in several different areas, I’m often involved in on-boarding new employees or helping our technical support staff understand how to deal with difficult customer issues,” he said. “The role of coach, or trainer, is one I happily accept because of the great opportunities this company has afforded me.”

Sharing Success is Most Important Value

So what is it about Tecplot that has compelled Tom to stay for essentially his entire professional life? After all, the combination of an undergraduate degree from the University of Washington, an MBA from Albers School of Business and Economics at Seattle University, and experience as a consultant at Accenture surely provided other opportunities along the way.

Quite simply, I like the people I work with, the values of our owners, and the cool applications that our software is used for. Perhaps most important are the values of our owners. I like that Tecplot practices ‘open-book management,’ which means all employees have access to our detailed financial results and, when the company performs well, everyone shares in the company’s success. I think it is important for all employees to understand the financial drivers and how they can contribute personally to moving those drivers.Tom Chan

It’s a good thing Tom is so satisfied with life at Tecplot. It would be nearly impossible to get his family to relocate outside of the Seattle area. “Issaquah, which is only about six miles from work, is our home,” Tom said. “We love all that this part of the country has to offer, especially the mild climate and all of the outdoor activities, most notably skiing, golfing and fishing. As an Asian-American, the cultural diversity of the area is also very important to me. The Seattle area is just a great place to raise a family and we know we’re fortunate to be here.”

There’ll always be serendipity involved in discovery.—Jeff Bezos

In previous blogs, I’ve discussed the SZL (Subzone Load-on-Demand) technology we are using to visualize a trillion cells. In this blog, I’d like to discuss a serendipitous side effect of the SZL technology. It is fairly easy to compress finite-element node maps. It is not entirely serendipitous—we worked hard to implement the compression—but it is so much easier to do when working with the SZL technology.

Uncompressed Node-map

To understand the compression, let’s first review the uncompressed node-map. In finite-element data, the elements (synonymous with cells) are defined by a list of node-numbers for the nodes at the corners of the elements. So, for example, four node numbers are needed to define a tetrahedral element.

Figure 1. Four node numbers are needed to define a tetrahedral element.

General Finite-element Grid

In a general finite-element grid, no spatial organization of the node-numbers is required. The values of N1 through N4 may be all over the map, from 1 to the number of nodes in the actual grid. In Tecplot 360 plt files, the node-map is the list of 32-bit integers specifying the corner node numbers for each element in the grid:

N₁¹,N₂¹,N₃¹,N₄¹

N₁²,N₂²,N₃²,N₄²,N₅²

…

N₁^NumElems,N₂^NumElems,N₃^NumElems,N₄^NumElsms

If there are a million elements, this is four million 32-bit (four byte) numbers, or roughly 4MB of data.

Spatially Cohesive Subzones

With SZL files, the cells are grouped in spatially cohesive cell subzones of 256 cells or less, and the nodes are grouped in spatially cohesive node subzones of 256 nodes or less. The node numbers are now given in terms of a node subzone number, S_n, and a node number (in the range 1 to 256), of the desired node in the node subzone. Now, instead of four 32-bit integers for each cell we store four 24-bit node-subzone numbers, S, and four 8-bit node-subzone node numbers, n. We store these as two consecutive lists:

S₁¹,S₂¹,S₃¹,S₄¹

S₁²,S₂²,S₃²,S₄²

…

S₁^NumElems,S₂^NumElems,S₃^NumElems,S₄^NumElsms

n₁¹,n₂¹,n₃¹,n₄¹

n₁²,n₂²,n₃²,n₄²

…

n₁^NumElems,n₂^NumElems,n₃^NumElems,n₄^NumElsms

Node Subzones Referenced by Cell Subzones

So far we’ve just broken the 32-bit node numbers into a 24-bit node-subzone number and an 8-bit node-subzone node number. We haven’t compressed anything, we’ve just reorganized it. The compression comes with the realization that the number of node-subzones needed for each cell subzone is far less than the 16.8 million possibilities given in a 24-bit number. In fact, most cell subzones reference far fewer than 256 node subzones. For example, consider the NASA Trapezoidal Wing we’ve worked with in previous blogs. The following figure is a histogram of the number of node subzone referenced by the cell subzones.

Histogram of the number of node subzone referenced by the cell subzones.

For this grid, 69% of the cell subzones reference 16 or fewer node subzones and the remaining 31% reference more than 16 but fewer than 257 node subzones. For this grid we don’t need a 24-bit integer to specify the node-subzone number – an 8-bit integer should do.

Saving Memory and Disk Space

To take advantage of this fact, we modify our previous node-map to include a list of the needed node-subzones, S, at the top and replace the old cell-by-cell references node-subzone numbers with reduced precision offsets, O, into the new list of referenced node subzones. For Trapezoidal wing case, for 69% of the cell subzones the offsets can be 4-bit integers and for the remaining 31% of the cell subzones the offsets can be 8-bit integers. Compared to the 24-bit integers we had originally, this saves a huge amount of memory and disk space. The resulting node-map for a subzone looks like this:

S₁, S₂, S₃, S₄, S₅, …

O₁¹,O₂¹,O₃¹,O₄¹

O₁²,O₂²,O₃²,O₄²
…

O₁²⁵⁶,O₂²⁵⁶,O₃²⁵⁶,O₄²⁵⁶

n₁¹,n₂¹,n₃¹,n₄¹

n₁²,n₂²,n₃²,n₄²

…

n₁²⁵⁶,n₂²⁵⁶,n₃²⁵⁶,n₄²⁵⁶

The list of node-subzone numbers requires additional space, but there is only a few of them. The additional space for this list is more than offset by the reduction in precision of the 1024 offsets.

Node-map compression is a WIN, WIN, WIN!

So how well does it work? It turns out to work quite well. For the Trapezoidal wing case mentioned above, the node-map is compressed by 57% and, because the node-map is such a large portion of the data file, this results in a 37% compression overall. Finally, the time to generate a slice with SZL data is actually 13% faster with compression. As impressive as these results are, for many files the compression works even better with overall compression of up to 55%. Node-map compression is a WIN, WIN, WIN!

Further Reading on the Compression Algorithm

For more information on our node-map compression, and additional results, check out our White paper on the subject:
Compression of Finite-Element Node-Maps with Subzone Load-On-Demand (PDF)

Blogs in the Trillion Cell Grand Challenge Series

Blog #1 The Trillion Cell Grand Challenge
Blog #2 Why One Trillion Cells?
Blog #3 What Obstacles Stand Between Us and One Trillion Cells?
Blog #4 Intelligently Defeating the I/O Bottleneck
Blog #5 Scaling to 300 Billion Cells – Results To Date
Blog #6 SZL Data Analysis—Making It Scale Sub-linearly
Blog #7 Serendipitous Side Effect of SZL Technology

The 5th annual Metacomp Symposium is being held at the Hilton in Pasadena, California, September 15-17, 2015.

Find out why 47,416 customers around the world use Tecplot software! Sit down with Tom Chan, Tecplot’s VP of Customer Development, for a demonstration. To set up an appointment during the symposium, contact Tom at 425.653.1200, 1.800.763.7005, or email tomchan@tecplot.com.

Here is what’s new in Tecplot 360 EX:

• Customizable color maps
• Data probing improvements
• Conditional expressions in equations
• Triangulation
• Streamtrace seeding
• Arbitrary slice enhancements
• More Tecplot 360 EX features►

Study of flow around wall mounted cube in 3D channel flow for moderate Reynolds numbers also shows tornado-like vortices on side of cube for all Reynolds numbers.

“One example might be a bridge with support columns embedded in a river, lake, or sea bed” says Anastasios Liakos a researcher with the Department of Mathematics at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. “If the columns have a square cross-section, the ability to clearly visualize horseshoe vortices would help engineers immensely in determining how to best battle deformation of the columns. The same would apply to aircraft, many of which have box-like protrusions, especially under the wing. The more we can minimize deformation, the better.”

Figure 1. Researchers have clearly visualized horseshoe vortices in study of flow around surface mounted cube in 3D channel flow for moderate Reynolds numbers. The study also showed tornado-like vortices on side of cube for all Reynolds numbers.

Building on the work of many researchers who have been studying fluid flow over the last 30 years, Liakos and his colleague Nikolaos A. Malamataris at the School of Physics, Astronomy, and Computational Sciences at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, recently took this research one step farther by clearly visualizing a horseshoe vortex in an actual 3D image for the first time.

“Other researchers have visualized these vortices, but they weren’t clear – you knew they were there but there was not enough resolution to be useful for engineering design. And clarity is essential because flow around a cube generates such complicated structures,” says Liakos. “Without those first efforts, though, we wouldn’t have been able to do this study. This was just the next step.”Anastasios Liakos a researcher with the Department of Mathematics at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland

Flow Under Creeping Conditions Studied

Figure 2. Close-up of the right half of a horseshoe vortex formed upstream from a wall mounted cube. For the first time in a computational study, this vortex is shown in an actual three dimensional image. A step by step study of the pressure and critical points along the plane of symmetry showed that the existent adverse pressure gradient, which appears at creeping flow conditions, needs to acquire a certain magnitude in order for the horseshoe vortex to appear. The horseshoe vortex appears at Reynolds number 1266.

Figure 3. Malamataris and Liakos found that a tornado-like vortex on the side of cube was present for all Reynolds numbers for which flow was simulated. The vortex appears because of the dihedral angle that is formed between the side of the cube and bottom wall of the channel. As the Reynolds number increases, the shape of this vortex becomes twisted due to the increased shear.

To gain a basic understanding of fluid mechanics in three dimensions, Malamataris and Liakos needed to study the flow under creeping conditions and in the whole range of laminar flow. This meant examining the three dimensional flow across a wide range of low to moderate Reynolds numbers.

They ran the numerical simulations using a custom parallel finite element code. The computational domain was designed according to actual laboratory experiment conditions, and analysis of the results were performed using the three dimensional theory of separation. The last step was to import it into Tecplot 360 EX.

Technical Support

“I can’t say enough good things about the tech support at Tecplot,” says Liakos. “This is a robust and sophisticated software program that can do amazing things. But if you don’t use certain features on a regular basis, you can get rusty and even may forget a feature is there. I knew what we wanted to do, I knew Tecplot 360 EX could do it, but I needed to refresh my knowledge. When I called tech support, they were very gracious, knew exactly what I was talking about, and showed me how to visualize our results efficiently and accurately. It was great.”

Effects of Temperature and Time

This is just the beginning of Liakos and Malamataris’ collaboration. The researchers plan to examine other parameters related to flow over a wall mounted cube, including the effect of temperature, time, and non-symmetrical boundaries.

“Shearing affects temperatures around the object,” says Liakos. “Wide variations in temperatures can cause issues, and you want to make sure the material and design can handle it.

“If it weren’t for Tecplot, I couldn’t do this stuff,” he adds.

Find out More

• Tecplot 360 EX▸
• Anastasios Liakos, Mathematic Department U.S. Naval Academy▸

Chief Customer Advocate

It isn’t often that a person with serious technical skills and interests is equally at ease singing on-stage or talking about modern art, but in the case of Straton Spyropoulos that juxtaposition exists in perfect harmony.

Straton is Tecplot’s senior technical support specialist, or as he likes to put it, the company’s Chief Customer Advocate. He graduated from George Washington University, which sits only five blocks from The White House, with both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in electrical engineering. Prior to joining Tecplot in 2011, Straton worked for a biomedical software company. Realizing that his real passion is with scientific software, as well as interacting with customers, he responded to a Tecplot job posting that “seemed like it was written for me.”

Tecplot Technical Support Group, from left to right, Jerimiah Lee, Straton Spyropoulos, Jared McGarry

Today, he leads a team of three technical support specialists who handle everything from training at customer sites to leading webinars to fielding dozens of support calls each day. “I love that everyday is different. It’s never boring around here,” Straton said.

Amazing Corporate Culture

Other than the daily variety that comes with his job, Straton credits Tecplot’s “amazing” corporate culture for his high-level of job satisfaction. As he puts it, most companies pay lip service to team work, but it’s a living reality at Tecplot. Straton attributes the company’s strong culture to co-founders Mike Peery and Don Roberts, who “have led by example for over 30 years and are always willing to lend a hand, no matter what the task.”

Motivated by Tecplot’s Customers

He is also motivated by Tecplot’s technology and the “exceedingly meaningful things our customers do with our products.” He cited NASA as an example. The space agency is using Tecplot 360 EX to analyze the stresses of re-entry on the heat shield of the Orion spacecraft. “Now that’s a cool, and very important, application of our products,” he said.

Straton Spyropoulos, Sr. Technical Support Specialist, racing off to help another customer!

While helping to create the most satisfied customers in the technical software industry is important to Straton, nothing compares to the importance of raising his only child, 9 year-old Leone. Luckily, Straton and his daughter share many of the same interests. Both are avid readers who love spending the afternoon at the library or one of Seattle’s various museums, especially the Experience Music Project (EMP) and the Seattle Art Museum. And when it’s time to get physical, the pair is equally passionate about cycling.

As alluded to above, music is a big part of Straton’s life. He has been singing since the second grade and recently was a member of the Seattle Peace Chorus, a local group that performs socially-conscious music – covers and original compositions — at small venues throughout the Seattle area. “I hope to re-join the group in the very near future,” he said. “It’s a blast.”

Future of Tecplot

When asked about the future of Tecplot, Straton cited the company’s 35-year track record and its practice of continually seeking customer feedback as reasons to be optimistic. “We have a solid foundation of products, but we do not rest on our laurels,” he said. “By continuing to listen very carefully to our customers, we will improve our existing products and develop new products as necessary. I think that approach will serve us well for another 35 years…and beyond”

This is the first video in our External Flow Getting Started series featuring the NASA ONERA M6 wing.

In this video, we will be going over how to load data into Tecplot 360, view the data set info, and manipulate the view of the wing.

You can find the link to the data in the description below. The ONERA M6 wing was tested by NASA in a wind tunnel at four different Mach numbers and various angles of attack. This is now a classic CFD validation case for external flows because it has a simple geometry, complex flows, and experimental data to validate against.

• Download NASA Onera M6 Wing Data and Layout Files► (2.92MB)
• Download the video in .mp4 format► (8.54M)

Understand Your Reservoir

Join the Tecplot RS team in booth #2517 at SPE-ATCE in Houston, September 28-30, 2015.

Don Roberts, Tecplot RS Product Manager (and co-founder and President of Tecplot, Inc.), and Raja Olimuthu, Business Development Representative, will be on hand to show you how Tecplot RS can help you uncover knowledge about your reservoir model behavior. And while you’re there, pick up a really cool Tecplot RS t-shirt!

Watch a video preview of what’s new in the upcoming release of Tecplot RS 2015 R1.

Make an appointment for an online or in-person demo by calling Don or Raja at 425-653-1200, or you can email donroberts@tecplot.com. Before the show, download a free trial of Tecplot RS►.

Tecplot RS differs from other visualization packages on the market in several ways. Tecplot RS is easy to use, offers more capabilities, and produces better-quality images, both on screen and hardcopy. James Gilman, Director of Engineering at iReservoir

Latest version of company’s tool for visualizing and analyzing oil & gas reservoir simulation data features user-requested upgrades and productivity enhancements

BELLEVUE, Wash. (September 10, 2015) – Tecplot, Inc., developer of the leading visualization and analysis software for reservoir engineers, today announced the general availability of Tecplot RS 2015 Release 1.

The most notable user-requested upgrades and productivity enhancements in this release of Tecplot RS include:

Bubble Plot Enhancements

The new bubble plot enhancements allow users to present well-production data in 2D and 3D grid plots through pie-chart symbols. The user assigns well variables to be displayed as pie segments, whose size is based on the relative value. The size of the bubble can also be assigned to a production variable. Each variable may also be scaled independently to convert to consistent units.

Water saturation shown with bubble pie charts. See What’s New in Tecplot RS 2015 R1

Interactive Equation Editor

A new calculator-style equation editor simplifies creating and modifying sets of equations for derived variables. Complete equations, including the appropriate syntax, can be entered interactively by selecting functions and existing variables from supplied lists.

Support for multi-reservoir NEXUS© models

With the new release, it is now possible to load and display solutions for multi-reservoir models from NEXUS simulations. Multiple-reservoir grids can be viewed together or separately layer-by-layer.

License Roaming

Users who need to travel can now check-out a network license for their laptop computer and take it on the road. The user will then have access to a licensed copy of Tecplot RS while they are disconnected from the office network. The check-out process is handled efficiently from a simple utility in the Help menu.

New Welcome Screen

When Tecplot RS is launched, users will be presented with a new Welcome Screen that provides quick access to recently used projects, documentation and online resources. They can also proceed directly to data loaders. After the Welcome Screen is dismissed it can be recalled at any time from the View menu.

It should come as no surprise that the key theme of this release is increased usability and user productivity. As with all of our product releases, we are guided by a commitment to giving our customers tools that make their work-life easier. For this release, the new welcome screen, equation editor, and license roaming feature are evidence of that commitment.Don Roberts, Tecplot president and Tecplot RS product manager

About Tecplot RS

First released in 2002, Tecplot RS helps users manage and analyze oil & gas reservoir simulation data, uncover knowledge about reservoir model behavior, and gain confidence in making crucial decisions. The software allows users to evaluate a full range of results, including line graphs, 2D x-sections, and 3D grid plots. Tecplot RS supports 64-bit Windows 10, 8, and 7; and 64-bit Linux platforms.

Pricing starts at $6,600 in the U.S. for a single-user perpetual license. Tecplot RS users with current Software Maintenance Service subscriptions can upgrade to Tecplot RS 2015 Release 1 at no additional cost. Special pricing is available for qualified academic users upon request.

About Tecplot, Inc.

Founded in 1981 by former Boeing engineers Don Roberts and Mike Peery, who today serve as CEO and chairman of the board, respectively, Tecplot is the leading developer of visualization and analysis software for engineers and scientists. Tecplot’s products allow customers using desktop computers and laptops to quickly analyze and understand information hidden in complex data, and communicate their results to others via brilliant images and compelling animations. The privately held company’s products are used by more than 45,000 technical professionals around the world.

Tecplot has been awarded numerous Small Business Innovation Research contracts from DOD, NASA, DARPA, and the National Science Foundation. In 2012, the company was named a Red Herring Top 100 Americas Award winner. Since its founding more than 30 years ago, Tecplot has consistently delivered category-leading innovation to the engineering and scientific communities. Examples of this never-ending innovation include Tecplot RS for oil & gas reservoir simulation, Tecplot Chorus for analyzing multiple simulations of design-space exploration data, Tecplot 360 EX for lightning-fast analysis of massive CFD simulation data, and Tecplot Focus for automating routine data analysis and plotting tasks.

Editorial Contact:

Peter Masi
Masi PR for Tecplot, Inc.
303.915.5335
Peter@MasiPR.com

Description

The stamp plot feature in Tecplot RS gives you a new way of displaying your well production data spatially with your grid solution.

Why is Stamp Plot Important?

After a reservoir simulation has been run, you typically need to analyze your raw data, well by well.

Looking at your production results gives you an initial understanding of the reservoir behavior. Then you need to dive into the grid solution to get a visual understanding.

It can be difficult to keep everything in your head as you flip back and forth between the raw data and the grid solution, especially as solutions become larger and more complex.

The need for a simple, easy-to-comprehend view of your data is crucial to get answers quickly.

The Stamp Plot in Tecplot RS gives you this needed smart view. It attaches the production data at each well location to the grid solution.

The resulting view shows you well- production time history and the reservoir dynamics – in a single plot. A plot that allows you full control over the variables that you want to display.

You can also magnify any plot to dive deeper into the details for further analysis.

In addition to the Stamp Plot, Tecplot RS has other smart views that help you gain a deeper understanding of your reservoir simulation results.

Thank you for watching!

Try Tecplot RS for Free

The post Stamp Plot Overview appeared first on Tecplot.

BELLEVUE, Wash. (August 29, 2018) – Tecplot, Inc. has announced the general availability of Tecplot RS 2018 Release 1. This is a major release of the company’s reservoir visualization and analysis software. Highlights of this release include the Stamp Plot, arbitrary slice enhancements and a visual cell-blanking indicator. The Stamp Plot introduces an entirely new way to view well production history.

Stamp Plot

A spatial approach to viewing well production history is introduced in Tecplot RS 2018 R1. Called the Stamp Plot, users can view grid solution data and XY results simultaneously in a single view. Typically, wells in the grid solution of a reservoir simulation are spread out at specific locations. Each well has its own associated production data (for example, water and oil production totals, pressure, or water injector). The Stamp Plot affixes a small stamp-size plot at each individual well location. The resulting view shows a time history of well production and the reservoir dynamics – all in a single plot.

“The Stamp Plot gives reservoir engineers a faster and easier way to get a deeper understanding of the dynamics of their reservoir model,” says Raja Olimuthu, Tecplot RS Product Manager. “This method of tying together different types of reservoir simulation outputs in a single plot is quite unique, and it will be a huge help for engineers to get to their answers faster.”

Arbitrary Slice Enhancements

The process of creating an arbitrary slice is easier than ever. Selecting one of three types of slice definitions (chain, radial or pair), and clicking “start,” will automatically display the arbitrary slice when the creation process is complete.

Cell Blanking Indicator

When Cell Blanking is activated, the blanking icon on the top toolbar will be illuminated with a green highlighter. This gives a visual indication that blanking is active. In the cell blanking dialog, each blanking constraint will also be illuminated green as a visual indicator that it is active.

About Tecplot RS

Tecplot RS helps engineers manage and analyze oil & gas reservoir simulation data. The software helps them uncover knowledge about reservoir model behavior thereby gaining confidence in making crucial decisions. The software allows users to evaluate a full range of results, including line graphs, 2D x-sections, and 3D grid plots.

Tecplot RS users with current TecPLUS Maintenance Service can upgrade to Tecplot RS 2018 Release 1 at no additional cost. Tecplot RS Software Upgrade.

Customers with expired maintenance and new users can download a fully-functional 5-day trial. Download Trial Software.

Special pricing is available for Academic users upon request. Tecplot for Academics.

More information about Tecplot RS can be found on the company’s website, www.tecplot.com/rs/

About Tecplot, Inc.

Tecplot, an operating company of Toronto-based Constellation Software, Inc. (CSI), is the leading independent developer of visualization and analysis software for engineers and scientists. CSI is a public company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX:CSU). CSI acquires, manages and builds software businesses that provide mission-critical solutions in specific vertical markets.

Tecplot visualization and analysis software allows customers using desktop computers and laptops to quickly analyze and understand (local or remote) information hidden in complex data, and communicate their results to others via professional images and animations. The company’s products are used by more than 47,000 technical professionals around the world.

Contact:
Margaret Connelly
Marketing Manager, Tecplot, Inc.
pr@tecplot.com
(425) 653-1200

The post Tecplot RS 2018 Release 1 is Now Available appeared first on Tecplot.

“It’s not just what you write, but how you write it.”
– Wilma Davidson

Tecplot 360 performance improved significantly in the last five years. However, the performance a user is experiencing varies dramatically with the file format being read. Whenever we tell one of our software developers that a customer is experiencing poor performance, their first question is always “What data format are they reading?” I’m writing this blog to explain why.

Tecplot File Formats

There are three main Tecplot formats that are in use today:

• SZL or Subzone loading format (with extension .szplt) is the newest.
• PLT is the legacy binary file format (extension .plt).
• DAT is an ASCII version of the PLT format (extension .dat).

NASA Trap Wing – isosurface of Cp = -2.0.

I thought it would be useful to compare the file size and Tecplot load times of these file types for a common CFD use case – the NASA Trapezoidal wing.

The NASA Trapazoidal wing case has 204 million finite-element cells in the volume zone, and another 5.1 million surface cells to define the geometry. The surface cells are stored in a separate PLT file which is read in at the same time as the SZL, PLT, or DAT file. The plot is the geometry of the aircraft and the Cp = -2.0 isosurface.

Note that the time measurements include both reading the file and generating the image. Both SZL and, to a lesser extent, PLT delay the loading of data until you select an object (slice, isosurface, or streamtraces) to display. The “read” operation only reads the file headers. This also means the time to read the data can vary substantially with the type of plot you are doing, and the timings given here are for the specific plot that I have created – an isosurface of Cp = -2.0.

Measuring Performance

Whenever you measure performance you need to take disk caching into account. When you read a file the operating system will save selected portions of the file in a cache so that subsequent reads of the file are faster. Caching occurs on the local computer and, if you are reading from a network drive, on the remote file server. To get consistent timings, I used the local hard disk in my engineering (MS Windows) workstation and followed a consistent process:

1. Shut the computer down and turn it back on to completely clear the cache for the uncached measurements, and
2. Load the file several times to get a fully cached measurement.

The following table contains the results.

File Size Comparison

Note that the file sizes are very different for the three file types, with the SZL file being 62% of the PLT file and just 20% of the DAT file. This DAT file was created by reading the PLT file into Tecplot and writing out as an ASCII file using the default settings. By default, it writes 9 significant digits for each of the floating-point variables. The DAT file size could have been reduced somewhat by reducing the number of significant digits, but that is risky for viscous flow grids which are highly stretched to resolve the boundary-layer near the wall.

Time-to-Load

SZL is the fastest file format by a factor of 6.1 to 6.4 over PLT and by a factor of 373 to 1097 over DAT. This is to be expected because, when loading SZL files, only the data near the isosurface (and the airplane surface) are loaded. For PLT, the coordinate (X, Y, Z) and isosurface (Cp) variables are loaded for the entire volume zone and for DAT all variables are loaded multiple times (more on this later). DAT was the slowest format, by a factor of 373 to 1097 over SZL and a factor of 91 to 171 over PLT.

Clearly, you want to avoid loading large DAT (ASCII) files whenever possible!

Another interesting thing is that the DAT format had very little benefit from disk caching.

So, why is DAT (ASCII) so slow? When loading a DAT file, Tecplot first translates it into a PLT file using the equivalent of the Preplot utility, and then it reads the PLT file. The process is as follows:

1. Read the DAT file and write the header information into one binary file and the zone data into a second binary file.
2. Read the binary header and zone data files and write them out as a PLT file.
3. Read the PLT file (headers, coordinate variables, and Cp variable).

Not only is the larger size of the DAT (ASCII) file making the initial read much slower, but the data is then written, read, written, and read again before the plot can be generated. This is a lot of reading and writing!

Contact Technical Support at support@tecplot.com with questions about TecIO or converting your data.

Scott Imlay
Chief Technical Officer
Tecplot, Inc.

The post Comparison of Tecplot Data File Formats appeared first on Tecplot.

This blog is an excerpt from the Tecplot 360 Best Practices section of our Data Format Guide.

If you wish to generate native Tecplot 360 data files automatically from applications such as complex flow solvers, you have a number of options for outputting data into a format compatible with Tecplot. This blog outlines a few “best practices” for doing so.

1. Create Binary Data Files instead of ASCII

Binary data files (.plt or .szplt) are more efficient than ASCII files (.dat), in terms of disk space and time to first image. To create binary data files, you may use functions provided in the TecIO library. To create ASCII files, you can write out plain text in the usual manner. There are some cases where ASCII files are preferred.

Create ASCII files when:

• Your data files are small.
• Your application runs on a platform for which the TecIO library is not provided. If this is the case, please contact us at support@tecplot.com. There may be a way to resolve this issue.
• You wish users to be able to view or edit the data in a text editor.

Watch the Video Tutorial on Tecplot File Types

3. Use Block Format instead of Point Format

Block format is by far the most efficient format when it comes to loading a file into Tecplot 360. If your data files are small and you can only obtain the data in a point-like format (for example, with a spreadsheet), then using point format is acceptable. Binary files can only be written in block format. Point format is allowed for ASCII files, but running the Preplot utility will convert the data to block format.

For more information about the Preplot flag, see the Preplot section in the Tecplot 360 User’s Manual, or watch this helpful video tutorial Preplot and SZL Convert Tools.

4. Add Auxiliary data to Preset Variable Assignments in Tecplot 360

Zone Auxiliary data can be used to give Tecplot 360 hints about properties of your data. For example, it can be used to set the defaults for which variables to use for certain kinds of plots. Auxiliary data is supported by both binary and ASCII formats.

More information can be found for binary data TECAUXSTR142 in the Binary Data File Function Reference section, and for ASCII data in the Data Set Auxiliary Data Record section of the Data Format Guide.

5. Transient Data

• Data Sharing
  • Share variables whenever possible.
    Variable sharing is commonly used for the spatial variables (X, Y, and Z) when you have many sets of data that use the same basic grid. This saves disk space, as well as memory when the data is loaded into Tecplot 360. In addition, the benefits are compounded with scratch data derived from these variables because it is also shared within Tecplot 360.
  • Do not share variables between 3D and 2D zones
• Consider using Grid and Solution files for transient data.
• Use one object or mesh per StrandID which consists of multiple solution times. More information for binary data TECZNE142 in the Binary Data File Function Reference section, and for ASCII data in the Variable and Connectivity List Sharing section of the Data Format Guide.

6. Parallel Output

• Use TecIO-MPI which writes SZL files in parallel.
• Be sure to write to a parallel file system.
• Maximize striping for efficiency.

7. Passive Variables

Tecplot 360 can manage many data sets at the same time. However, within a given data set you must supply the same number of variables for each zone. In some cases, you may have data where there are many variables and, for some of the zones some of those variables are not important or not calculated. You can set selected variables in those zones to be passive. A passive variable is one that will always return the value zero if queried (e.g. in a probe) but will not involve itself in operations such as the calculations of the min and max range. This is very useful when calculating default contour levels.

8. Use the Native Byte Ordering for the Target Machine

When you create binary data, you can elect to produce these files in either Motorola (big- endian) byte order or Intel (little-endian) byte order. Today’s most popular platforms all use Intel byte order, and generally this is the order you should use when writing binary data. The exceptions involve older platforms no longer supported by Tecplot. If you are using such legacy platforms, it can improve performance to write the binary data in the order native to the platform on which it will be viewed, if this is known, even though Tecplot 360 will load data with either byte order.

NOTE: SZL doesn’t support big-endian byte ordering and only supports Native Byte Ordering at this time. TECFOREIGN142 has not yet been implemented in the SZL API. See more about TECFOREIGN142 in the Binary Data File Function Reference section of the Data Format Guide.

9. Use TECNODE instead of TECNOD to more flexibly specify the finite-element connectivity list (node list)

TECNOD requires you to provide the entire connectivity list for the zone while TECNODE allows you to give the connectivity list in chunks of specified size. It is often memory-inefficient to build the full connectivity list – especially if the data has mixed element types. Using TECNODE avoids this problem.

For help using TecIO, please email support@tecplot.com or call our support line at 425-653-9393.

Scott Imlay
Chief Technical Officer
Tecplot, Inc.

The post Best Practices for Generating Native Tecplot 360 Data Files appeared first on Tecplot.

Learn More and Download the TecIO Library »

TecIO is the library supplied with Tecplot 360 that enables third-party applications to output solution data directly to Tecplot binary-formatted files.

It exists as two separate libraries. The original serial version of TecIO outputs either .plt or the newer .szplt format. The newer parallel version, TecIO-MPI, outputs only .szplt.

Both versions are also available in source form, which enables their use on some otherwise unsupported platforms. And in the case of TecIO-MPI, it enables support for a variety of MPI implementations.

In its serial form, TecIO has been around for a long time, and it’s starting to show its age. A few examples:

• As zone types and features have been added, the routine to create zones (now called TECZNE142) has accumulated parameters to accommodate the new features. It now has 21 parameters—a bit ungainly.
• Only 10 files may be output simultaneously, and you have to do some bookkeeping to keep track of which file you’re currently outputting to.
• Solution data must be output in sequential zone-variable order.
• Integer data types are not supported.
• 32-bit integer parameters limit the size of the zones you can output, a limitation that will become important for some customers in the next few years.

New TecIO API

To address these and other issues, Tecplot 360 2017 R2 introduced a new API (application programming interface) to TecIO, both serial and parallel versions. This new API offers many advantages over the legacy API:

• Separate routines for creating each zone type take only the parameters required for that zone type.
• The number of files you can output simultaneously is limited only by the underlying operating system.
• You can output zone variables out of order—you are not required to output all of your X variables before you can start outputting your Y variables, etc.
• You can output zones that have 8-, 16-, and 32-bit integer data.
• 64-bit integer parameters allow outputting zones whose index limits would overflow 32-bit integers.

You can see the new API at work and compare it with the old API in TecIO’s C++ example flushpartitioned.cpp. You’ll find lines such as the following, which show the old and new side-by-side:

#if defined OLD_API
returnValue = TECDAT142(&pNCells[ptn - 1], p[ptn - 1], &dIsDouble);
#else
returnValue = tecZoneVarWriteFloatValues(fileHandle, zone, 4,
ptn, pNCells[ptn - 1], p[ptn - 1]);
#endif

Fortran 90 programmers might prefer to look at the example rewriteszl.F90, which shows both reading and writing a .szplt file using TecIO’s Fortran 90 interfaces.

Please note that this new API in its current form outputs only the newer .szplt format, which is not readable by Tecplot Focus and does not (currently) support polyhedral zones. The legacy API will continue to be available until those limitations are addressed. But if .szplt works for you, please consider using the new API for your Tecplot binary file output.

As always, please contact our excellent technical support team if you have questions.

Happy Tecplotting!

Learn More and Download the TecIO Library

David E. Taflin, Ph.D.
Senior Software Engineer
Tecplot, Inc.

The post New TecIO API for Tecplot 360 .szplt Output appeared first on Tecplot.

Description

In this video we’ll show you how to compute a vertical transect from FVCOM data using PyTecplot, our Python API (in Tecplot 360).

A vertical transect is a 2D plane that follows a prescribed path through the data and is projected vertically from the surface to the bottom.

We start with an FVCOM dataset already loaded. This dataset is of the Salish Sea, extending from British Columbia and down into Washington State.

Vertical Transect of the Salish Sea using Tecplot 360.
Related Webinar

Define the Vertical Transect Path

First we need to define the path of the transect. To do this select the poly-line geometry tool. Using the geometry tool, click on locations to define the path of the transect.

Here we’ll define a path from the Straight of Juan de Fuca through the San Juan and Gulf islands, and up to the mouth of the Fraser River.

Extract the Points

Then right-click on the geometry to extract the points. This will create a new zone called “Extracted Points” which defines the XY coordinates to use for the transect.

Check the Grid Density

It is important to ensure that there are enough XY points to effectively capture the density of the grid. By turning on Scatter for the Extracted Points and turning on Mesh for the solution data we can see that the density of XY points is sufficient for our grid. Too many points are better than too few points, as you want to ensure you don’t skip over too many cells. This will result in a good continuous transect.

Invoke PyTecplot

Now that we have the XY points defined by the Extracted Points zone, we can invoke the PyTecplot script. To do this we must first allow PyTecplot Connections via Scripting -> PyTecplot Connections. Now you can run the VerticalTransect.py script from a command prompt. Using “python –O” will run the script in optimized mode, which will improve performance.

This script will connect to Tecplot 360, find the zone called Extracted Points and use the XY points to define a vertical surface zone through the volume, which defines the shape of the transect. The solution variables are then interpolated from the solution data onto the transect zone at each time step. This dataset has 24 timesteps with approximately 140,000 elements per timestep – this script should take about 15 seconds to run.

Animate Through Time

Now that we have the result, we can animate through time with the two frames linked together.

If you have a specific transect path, you can easily modify the script to supply a specific set of XY points.

This concludes the tutorial for computing a vertical transect in Tecplot 360.

Thank you for watching!

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The post Computing a Vertical Transect in Tecplot 360 appeared first on Tecplot.

Description

Computing an average over time is an important method in CFD to understand overall trends in turbulent flow fields. In ocean science, a time average can be used to remove the effects of seasonality to understand long term trends. Thankfully, this can be accomplished fairly easily in Tecplot 360.

In this video we’ll start with a vertical transect extracted from an FVCOM solution. This transect shows the salinity along a prescribed path through time. The data has a common grid throughout time, so we can use simple equations to compute the average.

We will duplicate the first zone in our transect and rename the zone to “Transect Time Average.”

Then we can use the Specify Equations dialog to compute the average as such:

1. Select the Transect Time Average zone
2. Enter an equation summing the salinity in each zone, and dividing by the number of zones:
   {salinity} = ({salinity}[1]) + {salinity}[2] + … + {salinity}[n]) / n

Clearly, this will become cumbersome for a large number of timesteps and multiple variables. This will be better done with a Python script which will not only easily handle a large number of zones, but can also compute the time average for a large number of variables.

To run this script we must first enable PyTecplot Connections via the Scripting menu. Then, from a command prompt we execute the script. This will prompt us for which Strand we want to average. The strand number can be found in the Dataset Information dialog. A strand is simply an integer which identifies a collection of zones through time.

Once we enter the strand number the script will handle the zone duplication and execution of the formulas to average the results.

When the script is finished we’ll simply copy the original frame and activate the Time Average zone to view our results.

This concludes the tutorial for computing an average over time in Tecplot 360 using PyTecplot.

Thank you for watching!

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The post Calculating Average Over Time appeared first on Tecplot.

Description

In this video, we introduce the use of shapefiles in Tecplot 360. For datasets that represent a geographic region, a shapefile can give additional context to help communicate the location of your data. In this video we’ll demonstrate the use of a Python script to convert a shapefile to Tecplot binary data format.

Here we are looking at pressure contours from a simulation of Hurricane Katrina. Without knowing it is hurricane Katrina, it’s difficult to tell where we are in the world. A shapefile will help make the region we are looking at more obvious.

Prerequisites are that you have a 64-bit version of Python and the PyTecplot and pyshp (Pyshape) Python modules installed. From a command prompt execute the script as such:

shapefile_to_plt.py USA_adm1.shp USA_adm1.plt

The script will then prompt you for additional information.

1. Convert to a single zone or one zone per shape. In this case we have a shapefile that represents the entire United States where each state is a separate shape. If we convert this file to one zone per shape, we will have one zone per state. This will allow us to turn on and off individual states and color them differently. Select option #2.
2. Choose the variable names to use. Note that this script does not make any coordinate transformations. If your shapefile is in UTM or Stateplane, it’s likely that you’re displaying your data using X/Y variables – so you should select X/Y. If your shapefile is in longitude/latitude coordinates you should select lon/lat as the exported variable names. In this case our shapefile is in lon/lat and we are displaying our data in lon/lat as well, so select option #2.
3. Finally, when choosing a separate zone per shape, the script will also prompt you for which shapefile record column to use to name the zones. It will display the column name and the first shape file entry. This selection is critical to identify each shape while in Tecplot 360. In this case we’ll choose option #5 which will give each shape the name of the state.

Now that we’ve converted the shapefile to Tecplot PLT format we can append it to the dataset.

• File > Load Data
• Browse to the PLT file
• Append data to active frame
• Match lon/lat to XLONG and XLAT respectively

Now that the shapefile data is loaded we will activate the Mesh layer so we can see the shapefile information. This presents a much clearer picture of the region and the path of the hurricane. If we fit the data to the screen, we can see the entire United States. Because we imported each state as a separate zone, we can deactivate any zones that are outside of our region of interest.

This concludes the tutorial on using shapefiles in Tecplot 360.

Thank you for watching!

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The post Converting Shapefiles to PLT Using PyTecplot appeared first on Tecplot.