Tecplot

Tecplot Focus Feature List

Tecplot Focus Feature Set
01. Line Plotting
02. Polar Plotting
03. 2D and 3D Plotting
04. Animations & Movies
05. Data Input
06. Automation
07. Web Support
08. Exploration & Analysis
09. Interface
10. Color Mapping
11. Cutomizing & Extending Tecplot
12. Outputting Plots & Data
13. Annotating Plots
14. Data Manipulation
15. Data Structures
16. Data Management
17. Saving/Restoring Files
18. Collaboration & Working in Groups

Line Plotting

XY Features: Scatter plots, line plots, bar charts, semi-log plots, log-log plots, error bar plots, splines, curve-fits, and more. Configure tick marks, symbols, symbol properties, labels, grid spacing, axes, colors, titles, legends, and fonts. Multiple horizontal and vertical axes.

Polar Plotting

Polar Plot Features: Create polar line plots (r, Θ). Configure angle in radians, degrees or arbitrary units. Select between linear or logarithmic radius.

2D and 3D Plotting

Mesh Plots: Display 1-, 2D, and 3D grids connecting data points. Color mesh lines by variable. Remove hidden lines. Configure line type and color.

Contour Plots: On 2D and 3D surfaces, display contour lines, color flood between contour levels, and color fill cells (or elements). Interactively add and delete contour lines and levels. Automatically or manually label contour lines. Configure legend, line type, color map, and contour labels. Use multiple contour variables to view and analyze interrelationships among several variables simultaneously.

Vector Plots: Display 2D and 3D vectors on planes, 3D surfaces, and in volumes. Display 3D vector components tangent to 3D surface. Display subset of vectors. Specify length, color, line type, and head style. Color by variable. Create streamlines through vector field.

Scatter Plots: Display 2D and 3D symbols at data points. Color and size symbols by variables. Display a subset. Configure color, size, fill type, and symbol shape.

Shade Plots: Set color of surface.

Boundary Plots: Display the edges of data segments on 2D and 3D surfaces and volumes. Configure color and line type.

Sketch Plots: Create drawings, word charts, and sketches without data or axes.

Lighting Effects: Set level of translucency and specular highlighting on 3D surfaces and choose lighting model as uniform, paneled, or Gouraud.

Volume Attributes: Set display of boundary surfaces, internal grid surfaces, and volume rendering options.

Combine Plot Types: Assign combinations of mesh, contours, vectors, scatter, boundary, shade, lighting effects, and volume attributes to various segments of data.

Animations and Movies

Animation Tools: Use built-in functions to automatically create movies of contour levels, slices, zones, streamtraces and more.

Manually: Interactively create movies by exporting an image, then repeatedly changing and appending new images to the same movie file.

Macros: Use a macro to perform multiple, repetitive changes, and write each image to a movie file.

Output: Export AVIs which play in most movie viewers. Export Flash (SWF) and Raster Metafiles (RMs) viewed with Tecplot’s Framer movie player.

Data Input

Data Formats: HDF4, HDF5, Excel (Windows only), PLOT3D, FLUENT, CGNS, Gridgen, DXF, DEM, comma- or space-delimited ASCII, native Tecplot ASCII, and Tecplot binary files.

General Text Loader: Scan ASCII data files for titles, variables and data, set filters, and preview processed data.

Subset Data on Input: Read subset of variables, data blocks, and data points to accelerate plotting.

Interactive Data Input: Enter XY plot data directly as two-column list of numbers.

Custom Data Reader: Use the Tecplot Add-on Developer’s Kit to create data readers for proprietary file formats.

Auxiliary Data: Attach supplementary information (name/value pairs) to data sets, frames, or zones. Auxiliary data can be read from your data file or set by a macro or add-on.

Image Import: Insert logos and bitmap images (BMP, PNG) and incorporate them into your plots.

Automation

Tecplot ADK: Add your own specialized functions, analyses, and data input/output to Tecplot using the included Add-on Developer’s Kit (ADK). Use C, C++, and FORTRAN. Customize the Tecplot menu and sidebar.

Configuration File and Start-Up Macro: Set new defaults and perform initialization with configuration files and start-up macros.

Web Support

Publish Directly to the Web: Output plots in PNG, AVI, and HTML format.

Internet Connectivity: Read/write files directly from/to FTP and HTTP sites.

Exploration and Analysis

Slicing Tool: Interactively slice 3D data displaying mesh, contours, and vectors on the slice plane. Display multiple slices. Move slice continuously or by steps. Slice on X-, Y-, and Z-planes or grid planes.

Iso-surface Tool: Interactively change iso-surface values. Display as paneled or Gouraud surfaces with translucency.

Probing Tool: Interactively click on surface and display interpolated variable values and cell indices. Snap selection to nearest grid point.

Streamtrace Tool: Interactively insert streamlines, streamrods, and streamribbons in 2D and 3D. Specify lines to terminate streamlines. Display markers along streamlines spaced by vector magnitude. Integrate upstream, downstream, or both directions. Place streamline rakes. Configure integration parameters, color, shape, and translucency.

Data Labeling Tool: Display the values of a field variable or node indices at data points.

3D Viewing Tools: Rotate, translate, and zoom into plot. Orthographic and perspective projections. Fly through data.

Contour Tool: Interactively click on surface to add and delete contour lines or levels.

Extraction Tools: Interactively define sets of points or polylines to which 2D and 3D surface data is interpolated and extracted for display as a separate plot.

Curve Fits: Least squares linear, polynomial, power, and exponential curve-fits. Least squares curve-fit of linear combination of user-specified functions. Create customized curve-fits with the Tecplot Add-on Developer’s Kit.

Data Blanking: Set multiple constraints (or masks) to clip the display of data based on local field variables, functions of variables, grid indices, or depth from viewing position. Cut-away blocks of 3D volume to reveal internal variations.

Plot Approximation Mode: Reduce the number of grid points used to render an image, while retaining its style. Control the threshold for activation, and the percentage of the grid points to use. View changes can be orders of magnitude faster.

Data Extraction: Extract iso-surfaces, slices, subsets, streamtraces, polylines, and point sets from 3D data to new data segments (zones) for further plot customization. Includes all variables from source data. Extract 2D contour lines.

Outer-Surface Extraction: Extract the surface of 3D volume finite-element data.

Interface

Point and Click GUI: Use an intuitive graphical user interface to create and arrange plots. No command line entry or programming required. Primary plotting tools and settings are conveniently located on the sidebar. Undo style, view and data changes.

Page Layout Paradigm: Create up to 128 plots on a single page; each plot contained in an adjustable frame. Interactively move and resize frames. Set frame attributes like background color, border, and header. Snap frames and plot objects to grid defined on page. Zoom into page. Use page rulers for positioning.

Overlaying Frames: Stack frames on top of frames. Set frame background to transparent to superimpose multiple plots.

Frame Linking: Link specific style attributes between and within frames. Link slices, iso-surfaces and other attributes between frames. Link axis styles, grid line styles and Zone/Map attributes within frames.

Plot Layer Buttons: With a click of the mouse, display mesh, contour, vector, scatter, shade, and boundary plot attributes individually or together in any combination.

Plot Type Selection: Quickly change between XY, 2D, 3D and Polar plot types.

Interactive Viewing: Zoom, translate, and rotate views using your mouse. Use keyboard shortcuts. Revert to previous views. See fully rendered plot during 3D view changes.

Color Mapping

True Color Rendering: Image is fully rendered in true color.

64 Custom Color Dialog: Customizable RGB color palette.

Continuous Color Flooding: Fill between contour lines with a smooth, continuous variation of color in 2D and 3D.

RGB Color Flooding: Assign up to three variables to the red, green, and blue channels. Use RGB color flooding with multi-phase and multi-component flows to view concentrated and diluted regions.

Customizing and Extending Tecplot

Macros: Automate plotting and analysis with macros. Create macros either by recording an interactive session or with a text editor. Use embedded interactive debugger to test macros.

Quick Macro Panel: Launch macros by mouse clicking Tecplot’s interactive, customizable, multi-page Quick Macro Panel.

Batch Processing: Run Tecplot in batch mode to automatically process data and create plots without displaying any graphics on the screen.

Animation: Create complex animations using macro language.

Outputting Plots and Data

Printing: Print a plot directly to a printer, route to a file, or route to a print spooler. Copy and paste to Microsoft Office.

Export Vector-based Plot Files: Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), PostScript, HPGL, HPGL/2, and Windows Metafile Format (WMF is available on UNIX and Windows).

Export Raster Plot Files: JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF, PostScript bitmap, Sun Raster bitmap, and X-Window bitmap. Image resolution is configurable and independent of screen resolution.

Export Movies: Export to Flash (SWF), AVI and Raster Metafiles.

Annotating Plots

Text: Place text interactively on plot. Set text color, angle, size, font, background box, and justification. Greek letters, mathematical symbols, superscripts, and subscripts. Create user-defined characters.

European Characters: Create annotation in European language characters with the extended ISO-Latin1 character set.

Geometries: Interactively create polylines, rectangular boxes, circles, and ellipses. Duplicate, reposition, and resize interactively. Fill and outline with color. Create and modify (point-by-point) interactively and read from a file.

Active Text and Geometries: Associate a macro function with text or geometries. Select objects with a special keystroke to execute the macro function.

Data Manipulation

Create, Alter and Transform Data: Alter your data or create new data using mathematical expressions. Store expressions for reuse.

Interpolate: Interpolate data from one set to another. Choose from linear, inverse-distance, and kriging.

Triangulate: Create set of triangles from data points defined in 2D plane.

Convert Cell-Centered Data: Interpolate cell-centered data to cell-corner (nodal) points.

Mirror and Subset: Create mirror images of existing data. Create new data as a subset of existing data.

Data Structures

Gridded Data: Data points arranged spatially as 1-, 2D, and 3D rectangular and curvilinear arrays; 2D unstructured finite-element grids of triangles and quadrilaterals; and 3D unstructured finite-element meshes of tetrahedral and 8-node bricks.

Gridless Data: Read data without grid structure or connections. Create triangular mesh from gridless data. Interpolate data into gridded data. Triangulate polylines in 2D and 3D.

Cell-centered Data: Read and display cell-centered data or a combination of mixed node and cell-centered data. Point objects such as vectors and scatter symbols can be plotted at the cell center, face center or node locations.

Multiple Data Sets: Create and display plots from up to 128 different sets of data simultaneously.

Multiple Zones: Each set of data can have over 32,000 segments (or zones).

Multiple Variables: Specify up to 32,000 variables (X, Y, Z, U, V, and so forth) per data point.

Data Management

Spreadsheet View: Display and edit data displayed in scrollable rows and columns.

Data Journaling: Save layouts with a list of macro commands attached to a data set, or save a new data set. View and modify data journaling commands in any text editor. Data journal alterations are applied when the file is opened.

Variable and Node Map Sharing: Improve performance by sharing variables and node maps between zones. Define one grid definition for time-dependent and iterative solutions.

Saving/Restoring Plots

Layout Files: Return to plots exactly as you created them by saving a layout file with all the frames, plotting attributes, and optionally the data. Apply layouts to same or different data sets.

Stylesheets: Save the style of a plot frame in a stylesheet, which includes all aspects and appearances of the plot frame, but not the data. Restore a stylesheet to recreate an old plot, or to create the same style of plot using a different set of data.

Collaboration and Working in Groups

Cross-Platform Capability: Run Tecplot on UNIX workstations and PCs running Windows 9x/Me/NT/2000/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux. Interchange Tecplot macro files, layout files, stylesheets, color map files, and data files between all platform types.

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