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.
2.1.2. Example Data Files¶
As part of VisIt’s regular testing, a number of example data files VisIt reads can be found in VisIt’s data subdirectory of the main code repository. In particular, if you are looking for examples of various of the human readable ASCII formats VisIt reads so that you can produce a compatible file, you may find examples there that help.
2.1.3. More Details of ASCII Formats¶
Here we describe more details specific to some of the ASCII formats VisIt reads.
2.1.3.1. Creating .visit
Files¶
To create a .visit
file, simply make a new text file that contains the names
of the files that you want to visualize and save the file with a .visit
extension.
- Visit will take the first entry in the
.visit
file and attempt to determine the appropriate plugin to read the file. - Not all plugins can be used with
.visit
files. In general, MD or MT formats sometimes do not work.- An MT file is a file format that provides multiple time steps in a single file. Thus, grouping multiple MT files to produce a time series may not be supported.
- An MD file is one that provides multiple domains in a single file. Thus, grouping multiple MD files to produce a view of the whole may not be supported.
Here is an example .visit
file that groups time steps together. These files should contain
1 time step per file.
timestep0.silo
timestep1.silo
timestep2.silo
timestep3.silo
...
Here is an example .visit
file that groups various smaller domain files into a whole dataset
that VisIt can visualize. Note the use of the !NBLOCKS
directive and how it designates the
number of files in a time step that constitute the whole domain. The !NBLOCKS
directive must
be on the first line of the file. In this example, we have 2 time steps each composed of 4 domain
files.
!NBLOCKS 4
timestep0_domain0.silo
timestep0_domain1.silo
timestep0_domain2.silo
timestep0_domain3.silo
timestep1_domain0.silo
timestep1_domain1.silo
timestep1_domain2.silo
timestep1_domain3.silo
...
You may also explicitly indicate the time associated with a file (or group of block files)
using the !TIME
directive like so…
!NBLOCKS 4
!TIME 1.01
timestep0_domain0.silo
timestep0_domain1.silo
timestep0_domain2.silo
timestep0_domain3.silo
!TIME 2.02
timestep1_domain0.silo
timestep1_domain1.silo
timestep1_domain2.silo
timestep1_domain3.silo
...
2.1.3.2. Point3D Files¶
Point3D files are four or fewer columns of ASCII values with some header text to indicate the
variable names associated with each column and a coordflag
entry to indicate how to
interpret the columns of data as coordinates. Point3D files can be used to define discrete
points in 1, 2 and 3 dimensions having a single scalar value associated with each point.
Some examples are below. The Point3D file…
x y z value
0 0 0 0
0 0 1 1
0 1 0 2
0 1 1 3
1 0 0 4
1 0 1 5
1 1 0 6
1 1 1 7
Defines a collection of 8 points in 3 dimensions have a scalar variable named value.
Below, the #coordflag
directive is used to define the same collection of 8 points in
3 dimensions as the previous example except where the columns holding the z-coordinate
and the scalar variable are interleaved.
x y value z
#coordflag xyvz
0 0 0 0
0 0 1 1
0 1 2 0
0 1 3 1
1 0 4 0
1 0 5 1
1 1 6 0
1 1 7 1
In the example below, the #coordflag
directive is used to define a collection of
points in two dimensions where each point has a velocity magnitude value associated
with it.
x y velocity
#coordflag xyv
0 0 1
0 1 1.01
1 0 2.02
Likewise, for a collection of points in just one dimension, we would have
x y velocity
#coordflag xv
0 1
1 1.01
2 2.02
There are some additional examples of Point3D files on the VisIt wiki pages.