Scientific Visualization

Instructor: Alex Razoumov (WestGrid)

We will start with a brief introduction to scientific visualization, and will spend the first hour doing simple 1D/2D/3D plotting using plot.ly open-source Python library. The rest of the day we will study 3D scientific visualization with ParaView, an open source, multi-platform data analysis and visualization tool designed to run on a variety of hardware from an individual laptop to large supercomputers. With ParaView users can interactively visualize 2D and 3D data sets defined on structured, adaptive and unstructured meshes or particles, animate these datasets in time, and manipulate them with a variety of filters. ParaView supports both interactive (GUI) and scripted (including offscreen) visualization, and is an easy and fun tool to learn.

Target audience: anyone interested in scientific visualization

Duration: 6 hours

Level: beginner

Prerequisites: This is an introductory course, no prior visualization experience is required.

Laptop software: This workshop will feature many interactive hands-on exercises, so all attendees will need to bring their laptops (and perhaps a power cord for use throughout the day) with wireless access and should have ParaView installed before the workshop. If you want to follow plot.ly exercises at the beginning of the workshop, we also recommend installing a remote SSH client (on Windows laptops we recommend the free edition of MobaXterm; on Mac and Linux laptops no need to install anything). We will provide all sample data and codes for the exercises, and you can bring your dataset if you want to visualize it with ParaView. No need to install plot.ly on your laptop – we will have it installed on our remote cluster.