2.1. Supported File Types

VisIt can create visualizations from databases that are stored in many types of underlying file formats. VisIt has a database reader for each supported file format and the database reader is a plugin that reads the data from the input file and imports it into VisIt. If your data format is not listed in File formats supported by VisIt then you can first translate your data into a format that VisIt can read (e.g. Silo, VTK, etc.) or you can create a new database reader plugin for VisIt. For more information on developing a database reader plugin, refer to the Getting Data Into VisIt manual or send an e-mail inquiry to visit-users@elist.ornl.gov.

2.1.1. File extensions

VisIt uses file extensions to decide which database reader plugin should be used to open a particular file format. Each database reader plugin has a set of file extensions that are used to match a filename to it. When a file’s extension matches (case sensitive except on MS Windows) that of a certain plugin, VisIt attempts to load the file with that plugin. If the plugin cannot load the file then VisIt attempts to open the file with the next suitable plugin, before trying to open the file with the default database reader plugin. If your files do not have file extensions then VisIt will attempt to use the default database reader plugin. You can provide the -default_format command line option with the name of the database reader plugin to use if you want to specify which reader VisIt should use when first trying to open a file. For example, if you want to load a PDB/Flash file, which usually has no file extension, you could provide: -default_format PDB on the command line.