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• start paraview
  
  • for simple serial paraview&
  • for mpi parallel on ASAP (see explanatio above):

   mympirun -np 3 \
      -machinefile some_nodes \
      ${PARAVIEW_HOME}/paraview \
      --use-offscreen-rendering &

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• Select Open Data from the File menu
  

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• Open the data file you wish to open
  • If doing an animation open the lowest data frame * It is optimal if the only files in the directory are the needed data files
  • Click on Accept

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• If there are multiple timesteps, simply click on the Timesteps button
  • if you are in the correct directory, simple click on Add All to add all the needed timesteps. If named correctly, they will be added in the correct order.
• If you are dealing with multiple parts, such as a fluid and a solid, simple repeat from Opening the data for each piece.
  • If dealing with multiple parts which add up to a similar whole, then you should create a collection file as outlined in PVD collections for VTU Trig/Tet meshes

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• After all the files have been added the file slider will show the number of frames available.
  • Select the frame you want to currently see and click Accept again.
    

• To play an animation, or record frames as images for a movie select Animation for the Views menu.

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• Customize the animation settings to reflect what you want to animate
  • To animate frames, simply select the base frame name (frame reader) as the Source
  • Under Parameter choose Filename. The start and end will automatically renumber to 0 to the number of frames.
  • If you want more than one thing to animate, such as a fluid and a solid, then simply have an accion (use Add Action), for each of the parts you want to change with time.

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• Notice: that in order to make sure you do not run out of memory, uncheck the Cache Geometry option.

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• Then, if you want to make a movie out of it, set the number of frames for the movie to be the same as the number of data files, and click on Save Images
  • Paraview will prompt you for a filename and directory. TIFF=s work best. Give it a name, and paraview will insert the frame number before the =.tif extension.
    

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• The threshold for when data is rendered on the front client versus each of the render servers can be setup from the 3D View Menu on the View menu.

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• The key to having your paralle exection respond the way you want it is by doing the correct parallel setup. The differnt options are explained when your mouse goes over any of the available checkboxes. The default values should work fairly well if you are not familiar with each of the options.