Introduction to Scientific Visualization Tools

Course 30000

Two hour lecture/demonstration, offered twice. No registration is required.

Scientific visualization tools use specialized computer graphics hardware (such as the SGI workstations in the Computer Graphics Lab) and software packages (such as DataVisualizer from Wavefront Techonologies and Explorer from the Numerical Algorithms Group) to help scientists and engineers understand the meaning of large quantities of data produced by experiments and simulations. This tutorial will introduce you to tools such as probes, slices, isosurfaces, contours, vector fields and particle traces. It will show you how you can use these tools to identify patterns, anomalies, hotspots, and other features of interest. You will also learn how these tools enable fast, effective communication of important properties of large and complex data sets. Finally, this tutorial will show you how to view 3-D data using the Data Visualizer and how to use NAG Explorer to display slices, contours, isosurfaces, vector ifelds, and volume data.

Benefits

After completing this tutorial, you will be able to :

understand the basic techniqies used in scientific visualization.
enter your own data into the Wavefront Data Visualizer and NAG Explorer
and use the packages to visualize data.
use probes, slices, contours, and isosurfaces to analyze three dimensional scalar fields.
use vector displays and particle traces to analyze three dimensional vector fields.

Prerequisites:

Getting Started with UNIX (Course 4000) or
Getting Started with UNIX, Video Version (Course 4001) or
Getting Started with UNIX, Accelerated Version (Course 4005) or
equivalent UNIX experience.

Course Coordinator: Kathleen Curry
Instructor: Kathleen Curry

Intro to SciVis Tools Tutorial - Web Version

This page written and maintained by Kathleen Curry (kat@bu.edu)