Visualization

Tutorials

Please refer to the Visualization tutorials page for "how-to" guides for visualizing AstroBEAR output.

Packages

AstroBEAR has two main options for post-processing and visualizing its output data:

• ​VisIt: A visualization package that uses the Chombo HDF format. This versatile program is the one most often used for visualization, especially of 3D data sets.

• Bear2Fix: A command-line utility that converts AstroBEAR output into a variety of different file formats. This in-house utility allows users to have total control over what is plotted and how it is displayed, via user-coded post-processing modules.

• We also employ MATLAB on occasion.

How we use our visualization packages

The tables below illustrate how we use the various packages.

Non-derived quantities:

Purpose	Visit	bear2fix	MATLAB
2D contour	X
2D pseudocolor	X	X
Streamlines	Xa	X
Hotboxes	X	X
Binning	X	X
3D plotting	X
2D slice	X	X
1D lineout	X	X
Volumetric rendering	X
Output lineouts	X	X

^a) Streamlines work in visit but they can be finicky.

Derived quantities:

Purpose	Visit	bear2fix	MATLAB
Plots like above	X	X
Summing along axis		X
FFT			X
Synth. emission		X
PDFs			X
Custom queries		X	X
Convert data to fixed grid		X