Introduction to the Eclipse Advanced Visualization Project

Presenter: Robert Smith, Research Associate, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Date: August 16, 2017

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggPkuLlsyEQ

Abstract

Visualization is an important part of many scientific workflows. It presents a chance for the scientist to attain a more complete understanding of data relating to a simulation. It is useful in both double checking a problem specification to ensure that the simulation is valid and in studying the result in order to more comprehensively and conveniently determine the physical meaning of the calculation output. The Eclipse Advanced Visualization Project (EAVP) makes visualization easy for both users and developers. EAVP collects several different visualization capabilities into a single framework which can be easily used from within an Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) application. Including packages to handle both pre- and post-processing, EAVP contains a variety of different capabilities for scientists interested in visualizing scientific problems. The project sets up a universal framework, usable through either OSGI services or Eclipse extension points, which makes it easy to quickly select and use one of the project’s provided visualization engines, for a developer to extend EAVP to add new visualization software to its supported services, or to create custom visualization by building off of EAVP’s standard visualizations. EAVP currently supports custom JavaFX 3D graphics embedded into the workbench as well as the ability to connect with instances of other software such as ParaView or VisIt, either locally on the user’s computer or by fetching the output of remote machines being used to carry out the visualization. This seminar will cover using these tools in the Eclipse Integrated Computational Environment (ICE) to view files in multiple formats. It will also explain the design of EAVP, and how it can be integrated into an Eclipse workbench to provide visualization for an RCP application. After the seminar, listeners will have learned how to set up a connection to remote machines for visualization in an Eclipse workbench, work with the EAVP’s tools to view and edit visualizations, and have a basic understanding of how to extend EAVP to integrate new visualization tools.

Target Audience: Researchers interested in simplified workflows for visualization with pre-existing packages such as ParaView or VisIt or developers interested in either the integration of ParaView, VisIt, or other tools into Eclipse or the use of real time 3D geometry and mesh editing.

Prerequisites: No prior knowledge of software is required.?

User Base: 330+

Software Availability: Free and open source, https://github.com/eclipse/eavp

Software Requirements: Eclipse ICE is needed to follow along with hands on demonstrations. It can be downloaded from http://eclipseice.ornl.gov/downloads/ice/releases/ICE2.2.0/

Use Cases: Preprocessing, post-processing, and simple plotting.

Training and Reference Materials: Create custom tutorial materials and host them at eclipseice.ornl.gov.

Biography

Robert Smith is a Post-Masters researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is a committer for the Eclipse Foundation on the Eclipse Advanced Visualization Project (EAVP) Integrated Computational Environment (ICE) projects. He also works on the open source Timing Authentication Secured by Quantum Correlations (TASQC) project. He earned his Bachelors and Masters both in Computer Science at Wake Forest University and his research interests lie in visualizations, scientific workflows, machine learning, and genetic algorithms.