EnSight Visualizer

EnSight is a commercial visualization package written and supported by Computational Engineering Intl. Its client-server organization allows much of the processing to take place on a powerful remote server like the Xserve cluster, while displaying the results on a local client workstation. A recent Ensight CFD incarnation includes a native Mac OS X version, but these notes still focus on an X11 version.

Documentation

Online documentation in the PDF format is available under the Help menu, or by looking in the /usr/local/cei/ensight82/doc/Manuals/ directory.

Data Requirements

EnSight includes translators for a variety of popular CFD data formats, such as FIDAP or PLOT3D. Its native data format is based on the concept of geometry, including nodal coordinates and a collection of model parts, such as volume or surface meshes, and result files, which include scalar and vector quantities. The conversion to EnSight data from the MIXD format data can be accomplished with the aid of the MIXD2EnSight converter.

System Requirements

The server runs on a remote machine for which a license is provided. The client runs on Mac OS X, or on any SGI workstation running IRIX 6.x, Sun workstation running Solaris, or on Linux 2.x, among others.

Usage

Add the following to your .cshrc file:

# set up CEI EnSight visualizer
if (-d /usr/local/cei) then
   setenv CEI_HOME /usr/local/cei
   set path = ($path $CEI_HOME/bin)
endif

or to .bashrc file:

# set up CEI EnSight visualizer
if [ -d /usr/local/cei ]; then
   export CEI_HOME=/usr/local/cei
   export PATH=$PATH:$CEI_HOME/bin
fi

and source it. If the server (the part that reads the data and does pathline computations) runs on a multi-CPU machine like hydra, set environment variable ENSIGHT8_MAX_THREADS to 2. If the client (the part that shows the user interface) runs on a multi-CPU machine like reynolds or prandtl, set environment variable ENSIGHT8_MAX_CTHREADS to 2 or 4. Note that with a standard non-gold EnSight license, the maximum number of threads actually used will be 2.

Some configuration information is stored in your ~/.ensight8 directory. For example, the server configuration file should look like this:

tempest(~)% cat .ensight8/ensight_generalgui_prefs.def
VERSION 8.070000
prefs: icon_help_labels OFF
...

In most cases EnSight client is run on the same machine as the server, and invoked using a single executable, initialized here with a previously saved command sequence test.com :

navier(test)% ensight8 -p test.com

One can also run EnSight on a remote workstation:

stokes(test)% ensight8.client

License Information

The current RWTH license allows 2 clients to connect and is managed by the computing center.

Our Rice University license expired for good in 2006.

Our current RWTH license expires on December 31, 2012.

Stereo

To configure EnSight for stereoscopic viewing on an SGI, create two files, namely ~/.ensight8/stereo_on :

/usr/gfx/setmon -n 1120x840_96s

and ~/.ensight8/stereo_off :

/usr/gfx/setmon -n 1920x1200_66_mfg

and make them executable. To enter stereo mode press F12 key. The screen will go blank for a second, and when it comes back, the LED on the transmitter above the monitor should be lit. Screen resolution in this mode is reduced, so you may have to experiment with window placement. It greatly helps to have a key binding available to move the window without access to its title bar. In 4Dwm or Mwm, one can add something like:

Meta<Key>m window f.move

to the active key bindings. Then pressing Alt+m anywhere in the EnSight window will allow you to move it. Press F12 again to exit the stereo mode. The stereo goggles were last observed at Rice MEMS 108. CATS goggles are yet to be acquired.

Known Problems

Since the Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update Ensight had some problems when starting up. As a workaround, start Ensight with:

ensight90 -no_start_screen

Past Problems

The changing geometry handling with fixed connectivity is treated in an unusual way. In these cases, only the first step contains connectivity information. On the other hand, EnSight loads the last step by default, and finding no parts defined, presents a blank viewer. The solution is to specify the starting time step in the Part Loader dialog (last seen in 7.3).
There is no way to visualize element-level data like the element volume or divergence. Actually, there is since EnSight 6.2, but our converter does not support it yet. One can use the Visual3 program for this purpose.
The Z-Clip feature produces unwanted clipping at extreme close-up views (6.0.3).
EPS files generated do not appear when included in a TeX document. This can be corrected by removing the lines:
```
<< /NumCopies 1  >> setpagedevice
```
and also
```
1.000 1.000 1.000 Cr
vpfill
```
from the beginning of the file (fixed?).
EPS files are also fatal to gs, unless they are saved with the .eps suffix, rather than .ps (fixed?).

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