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ParaView Changelog

What's new in ParaView 5.5.2

Jun 20, 2018
  • Fixed a crash when a ParaView client built with OSPRay connected to a ParaView server built without OSPRay.
  • On macOS, the Settings dialog now stays on top of the main ParaView window. This helps avoid losing the Settings dialog and is consistent with the behavior on other platforms.
  • Saving to BMP and TIFF file formats has been restored.

New in ParaView 5.5.0 (Apr 11, 2018)

  • NEW FEATURES:
  • Adding filters from the Pipeline Browser context menu:
  • It is now possible to create new filters from the Pipeline Browser context menu. Only filters that are applicable to the active source are shown in the context menu.
  • Saved custom camera positions:
  • Adjust Camera dialog now allows saving of more than 4 camera positions. The limit has been extended to 30 positions, with a minimum of 4. You can add/remove positions within this limit using the Adjust Camera dialog’s Configure… button.
  • Added LZMA compressor and compression level setting for XMLWriter:
  • The LZMA lossless compressor is now available when writing XML data files, offering a higher compression ratio and higher write time compared with existing LZ4 and ZLib compressors. A Compression Level setting is now available to fine tune the tradeoff between compressed file size and write time for each compressor.
  • Arbitrary-order Lagrange finite element support:
  • ParaView’s XML readers and writers support arbitrary-order Lagrange finite elements. The Unstructured Cell Type source can be used to generate representative grids with Lagrange elements.
  • More details about this release are available at:
  • https://blog.kitware.com/paraview-5-5-0-release-notes/

New in ParaView 5.3.0 (Mar 13, 2017)

  • VTK-M PLUGIN:
  • This release introduces the VTKmFilters plugin that includes an initial collection of VTK-m filters that fully utilize many-core architectures. This new plug-in comes with support for many-core systems via Threading Building Blocks (TBB). If desired, you can enable GPU support via CUDA by building ParaView from source with a VTK-m that has CUDA support enabled.
  • This initial release offers the following filters: Threshold, Contour (single-valued contours), Gradient (including divergence, vorticity, and q-criterion computation), and Level of Detail.
  • All of these filters excluding Level Of Detail support Unstructured Grids, Rectilinear Grids, Image Data, Uniform Data, and Poly Data of a single cell type. The Level Of Detail filter currently supports only Unstructured Grids and Poly Data of triangles. With the introduction of VTK-m, we have removed the earlier Piston and Dax GPU filtering options.
  • READER AND WRITER IMPROVEMENTS AND ADDITIONS:
  • Added support for accented and special characters in file paths.
  • Updates to the OpenFOAM reader include full support of 32-bit and 64-bit binary formats, better coverage of the Lagrangian formats, and the option to skip the initial conditions directory. The changes are a cooperative effort of Kitware, Inc., and ESI-OpenCFD Ltd (www.openfoam.com).
  • Added a new reader for Truchas metal casting and processing simulation data files.
  • Improved support for temporal CGNS datasets, including those with missing or incorrect ZoneIterativeData_t. In such cases, the flow solution node name is used to deduce which timestep the node corresponds to.
  • Besides exporting Cinema databases, ParaView now also supports importing Cinema databases for viewing. This is first version of this functionality, currently only supported in builtin mode, and is expected to improve in future releases. By importing Cinema databases, one can not only view the visualizations in the database, but also combine the same with other geometry and datasets in the same view.
  • Numerous fixes and improvements to Cinema export, the most important of which were:
  • Fixes for cell aligned and multiblock data
  • Depth and value rasters are now output as zlib-compressed raw files for wider compatibility
  • RENDERING IMPROVEMENTS:
  • Fast approximate anti-aliasing (FXAA) is now on by default. It can be disabled through Setting/Preferences through the “Use FXAA” setting in the “Render View” tab. This release also addresses issues when using FXAA together with SurfaceLIC.
  • EyeDomeLighting plugin is now supported with OpenGL2 rendering backend. The plugin had been disabled since 5.0.
  • OSPRay integration continues to mature. In this version we have bumped to OSPRay version 1.1.2 to catch a couple of bug fixes and added support for progressive refinement. To try it start ParaView with –enable-streaming and enter the maximum number of refinement passes for still renders in the “Progressive Passes” control in the OSPRay View properties section.
  • Added an option to show Polar Axes on a representation.
  • NEW FEATURES:
  • Introduced a new StreamLinesRepresentation plugin to display animated streamlines. It adds a “Stream Lines” option to the representation list.
  • Added LagrangianParticleTracker plugin that adds the “Lagrangian Particle Tracker” filter.
  • Added “Append Reduce” filter that can move data among MPI processes on the server.
  • Added a –servers-file= command-line option to specify a custom *.pvsc file that contains remote ParaView server connection information. When specified, this file is used instead of the default *.pvsc file.
  • PYTHON ENHANCEMENTS:
  • Python 3 support has been improved and is now officially supported, with the exception of ParaViewWeb components.
  • Added a Python function paraview.simple.ResetProperty to reset a property to its default
  • MISCELLANEOUS IMPROVEMENTS:
  • Properties for only the currently selected representation are now shown to avoid cluttering the user interface.
  • Fixed bug with SurfaceLIC representations, performance should be significantly better and you should not see hangs in MPI runs now.
  • Removed limit of 4096 time steps in annotated .vtu files.
  • Added a mouse wheel zoom factor in Settings/Preferences to control the speed of zooming when the mouse wheel is moved.

New in ParaView 5.1.2 (Jul 28, 2016)

  • Major fixes:
  • Rendering translucent geometries: The depth peeling code was revamped for 5.1.0 which introduced two issues: first, it didn’t work as expected in client-server configurations when rendering remotely; second, it had issues with multiple windows/views were present. Both these issues are now fixed. A new environment variable, VTK_USE_LEGACY_DEPTH_PEELING is also added to force using the older version of the depth peeling code.
  • Exodus reader: A bug in Exodus reader was causing the reader to improperly read files with no timesteps. That should now be fixed.
  • Minimum CMake version: The minimum CMake version needed to compile ParaView has now been reduced to 3.3.
  • A few other minor fixes/improvements include:
  • Fixed the “?” button to show filter documentation.
  • Add option to Ghost Cells Generator filter to specify the number of ghost levels to generate.
  • Cinema SpecB was not revolving the camera around the data centroid, as expected. Fixed that.
  • Added a Catalyst example for the new zero-copy array class.
  • Fixed Examples/Catalyst/PythonFullExample when running with pvpython.

New in ParaView 5.1.0 (Jun 20, 2016)

  • Adds a new startup screen with some links that help ParaView rookies produce visualizations from example data in a matter of minutes. The startup screen has a link to the ParaView Getting Started Guide as well as a link to some example visualizations.
  • The new ParaView Getting Started Guide is a brief, two-page step-by-step tutorial that shows some of the most-used features and explains fundamental concepts in ParaView. Clicking the link to this guide in the startup screen will open it in your local PDF viewer.

New in ParaView 5.0.1 (Mar 30, 2016)

  • Remote rendering with translucent geometry or volume rendering had artifacts due to the image compression algorithm used for delivering rendered images to the client. This is now fixed by adding a new compression algorithm (LZ4). LZ4 is now the default compression algorithm used for delivering images in client-server mode, instead of SQUIRT.
  • ‘Ray Cast Only’ option was accidentally removed from the available volume mapper choices when volume rendering 3D image datasets. This has been fixed.
  • Fixed Axes Grid disappearing when using parallel projection.
  • Arrays from Field Data were accidentally being listed in array selection widgets for filters like Threshold. Fixed that.
  • Fixed run-time issues with executing Python scripts generated using ParaView’s tracing capabilities when the pipeline had multiple output ports.
  • Several fixes for volume rendering have gone into this release including fixing issues with volume rendering using cell data arrays.

New in ParaView 4.4.0 (Sep 15, 2015)

  • Axes Grid (aka Cube Axes 2.0):
  • This release introduces a new annotation type: Axes Grid. Axes Grid is designed as a Cube Axes replacement and can be used to render a grid for the coordinate axes. With improved labeling and formatting capabilities, Axes Grid is intended to completely replace Cube Axes in coming releases.
  • Several new color maps have been added that were designed through close collaboration between COSIM climate modelers at LANL, and artist Francesca Samsel. The color maps move through changes in hue, saturation and value to create a longer line through color-space.
  • Quartile Chart View (Plotting multiple elements over time):
  • Quartile Chart View makes it easier to visualize summaries for values from multiple selected cells or points over time using the Plot Selection Over Time filter. This is now the default view used to show results from this filter.
  • Selection enhancements:
  • A multitude of selection enhancements have gone into this release. Interactive selection allows users to interactively select and label elements in a dataset by simply moving their mouse pointer over the visualization. Modifier buttons make it easier to add/subtract selected elements even in the Render View. Finally, Select Points On will find the closest point, retiring the need to rubber band select points.
  • Multiblock enhancements:
  • Multiblock datasets are now automatically colored so that it’s easier to distinguish different blocks. Furthermore, the Multiblock Inspector reflects this coloring and allows users to override block colors and opacities as needed.
  • Display only available annotated values in the data set:
  • An option has been added to the the Color Map Editor when interpreting values as categories to show only colors for annotated values actually in the data set. The data range concept has been extended to categorical data values to represent the list of categories in the data set. Updating the data range updates the colors displayed in the scalar bar.
  • Scalar bar and other scalar coloring improvements:
  • Scalar bars used to automatically change orientation based on their placement in the view. The orientation can now be fixed to enable greater control of their placement. A bug that sometimes made setting a desired font size difficult or impossible has been fixed. The default number of digits of precision has also been changed from 20 to 6, given more readable scalar bar labels. As a side note, a brand new implementation for the scalar bar is currently underway, so stay tuned!
  • A new setting makes it possible to set a list of regular expressions defining array names that should not be displayed in the list of color arrays. This makes it easier to avoid cluttering the UI with internal arrays.
  • Furthermore, the Choose Preset dialog was completely revamped. It now allows searching for present using their name. Also the format for color preset files was changed from XML to a simpler JSON. Although importing older XML files is still supported, color presets can only be exported using the new JSON format.
  • Additionally, it is now possible to save a default color map for an array with a particular name so that any time an object is first colored by that array, the default for that array will be used.
  • Lightweight Periodic Dataset Generation:
  • New in this release, Angular Periodic Filter allows users to generate an output dataset from a periodic block provided as the input with minimal memory overhead.
  • Snap points to surfaces:
  • Points in Spline Source and Poly Line Source can be snapped to surfaces with the ‘p’ key. Select the point in the table in the Properties panel and type ‘p’ while hovering the mouse cursor over a point on the surface to snap the point to the surface.
  • Simplified Copy/Paste:
  • Copy/Paste for copying filter properties has been supported in ParaView for several releases. In this releases, we made it easier to access (using buttons on the Properties panel) and extended the ability to including display and view properties.
  • Simply use the Copy/Paste to copy parameter values between filters, views, etc.
  • Reading image stacks as volume:
  • To better handle tomography use-cases, we now support opening image stacks, e.g. a series of tiff files, as a 3D volume rather than a temporal dataset. On opening an image file series, users can choose to treat the dataset as a 3D volume using options on Properties panel.
  • The ParaView Guide is being updated to include documentation for several of these new features and the updated version will be made available with ParaView 5.0.

New in ParaView 4.0.1 (Sep 5, 2013)

  • Enhancements for Visualizing Multi-block Datasets
  • The Properties panel has been undergoing changes in the past few releases. This release includes further cleanups, bug-fixes and enhancements including a newer and cleaner look for the Properties panel with the ability to group widgets based on functionality. The plugin framework has now been extended to enable users to add custom widgets for the new properties panel. Refer to this blog post covering how to effectively use the new panel. Developers are referred to ParaView Wiki for additional details.
  • Extended annotations with mathtext
  • Exporting vector graphics
  • Completely redesigned ParaViewWeb
  • Enhancement to CoProcessing Modules
  • ParaView’s CoProcessing support has undergone several usability improvements with the ability to build adapters externally, and cleanups to the Python coprocessing modules and scripts. Additional details will soon be available in form a Catalyst/CoProcessing Users Guide in the near future.
  • Improvements to Scalar Bar (Color Legend)

New in ParaView 3.6.2 (Jan 8, 2010)

  • The Python interface has been revamped, an exciting new extension to the Paraview Python interface is Python trace. The goal of trace is to generate human readable, not overly verbose, Python scripts that mimic a user's actions in the GUI. See the "Python Trace" article on page 6 of the October 2009 Kitware Source for more details.
  • ParaView 3.6.2 includes a collection of statistics algorithms. You can compute descriptive statistics (mean, variance, min, max, skewness, kurtosis), compute contingency tables, perform k-means analysis, examine correlations between arrays, and perform principal component analysis on arrays. More information about these filters is available on the ParaView Wiki.
  • ParaView 3.6.2 includes the VisTrails Provenance Explorer Plug-in in Windows and Linux packages. VisTrails is an open-source scientific workflow and provenance management system developed at the University of Utah that provides support for data exploration and visualization. The VisTrails Plug-in brings provenance tracking and many of the benefits of provenance to ParaView users. It automatically and transparently tracks the steps a user followed to create a visualization. In contrast to the traditional undo/redo stack, which is cleared whenever new actions are performed, the plug-in captures the complete exploration trail as a user explores different parameters and visualization techniques. A tree-based view of the history of actions allows a user to return to a previous version in an intuitive way, undo bad changes, compare different visualizations, and be reminded of the actions that led to a particular result. Also, there is no limit on the number of operations that can be undone, no matter how far back in the history of the visualization they are, and the history is persistent across sessions. The VisTrails plugin can save all of the information needed to restore any state of the visualization in .vt files, which can be reloaded across ParaView sessions and shared among collaborators. This also allows multiple visualizations to be shared with a single file.
  • LANL's cosmo plug-in is now distributed with ParaView 3.6.2. This plug-in allows ParaView to read and process *.cosmo format files, in which particles are described by mass, velocity and identification tags. These particles typically represent stellar masses. The halo finder filter is a friend-of-a-friend particle clustering algorithm. It creates groups containing particles that satisfy a tolerance/threshold linking distance criterion. The cosmology data format, halo finding algorithm, and related (experimental) filter implementations are made possible by the LANL cosmology researchers, the LANL visualization team, and international collaborators.
  • Mac application bundle and comand line tools are now built as universal binaries (PPC and Intel i386). This simplifies managing ParaView on Mac as now there is only a single binary to download for any architecture.

New in ParaView 3.6.1 (Dec 12, 2009)

  • Color palettes which make it easier to switch between color schemes that are suitable for printing and for screen.
  • Improved support for temporal readers and filters.
  • Axes annotations and scalar bar for 2D render view.
  • Zooming to selected region in 3D view.
  • Quick launch for creating sources and filters using Ctrl+Space or Alt+Space.