VisIt Changelog

What's new in VisIt 2.13.2

Jun 6, 2018

Bugs fixed:
Added back the disabling of using High-Resolution drawing on OSX versions at 10.10 or higher since it causes rendering issues on Retina Displays.
Added UNC style path support for Windows. This should resolve problems saving/reading config files when running on diskless images, and remove the necessity for setting VISITUSERHOME environment variable.
Corrected several errors in the NERSC host profiles. The haswell_interactive and knl_interactive profiles for cori had the partition set when they shouldn't have. The regular profile for edison had an invalid node to processor ratio.
Corrected a serious memory leak where the graphical user interface could easily go over 1 gigabytes in memory usage. Memory was leaked each time the active plot was changed as well as when plots were added, deleted, hidden or shown.
Corrected a bug, introduced in version 2.13.1, opening multipart Silo files that had a .root extension.
Corrected a bug on Windows, introduced in version 2.13.1, where clicking the 'Change username' option in the password window when connecting to a remote host would prevent the password window from reappearing.
Enhancements:
Added host profiles for the LLNL rzalastor machine.
The Explode operator has been added. This operator allows users to extract and manipulate the materials and cells of their datasets through "explosions" of different origins. There are three types of origins allowed: point, plane, and cylinder. When exploding materials, the dataset's materials are extracted and displaced in a direction and distance derived from their relationship to the origin. Exploding cells produces a similar effect, but with cells rather than materials. There are a number of options available to users for refining the behavior of explosions, such as tuning the force applied to the materials/cells during explosion, deciding whether to explode the cells of a material or the entire dataset, and having the ability to layer multiple explosions over one another. For more general information on this operator, visit our Sphinx documentation. For a tutorial on making movies using the explode operator, visit our Wiki page.
Added some minor enhancements to the ffp and unv readers.
Enhanced the array_decompose() expression function to specify components by name (string) as well as pick the closest component to that specified in the expression.

New in VisIt 2.12.3 (Jul 4, 2017)

Bugs fixed:
The Pick window wouldn't update the number of tabs displayed if picks were performed after changing the number of tabs, but before 'Apply' was clicked.
A bug was corrected with the reading of numpy files on Windows.
A bug was corrected with expressions involving multiple matvf functions using the same material name.
A bug was corrected with query-over-time where it would yield different results in certain instances than repeatedly changing the time state and querying the value. In particular, for Boundary plots or when an Isosurface operator were used.
The Silo plugin was modified to prevent the plugin from searching for the first non-empty sub-block on namescheme'd multi-block objects for which block-level empty objects were not written. As specified in previous release notes, such Silo files are considered invalid. Now, the Silo plugin will enforce this.
A bug was corrected with the ignore-missing-blocks logic in the Silo plugin that lead to potential mdserver crashes.
A bug was corrected with the Xdmf reader where the number of components in cell-centered attributes was incorrectly calculated in some instances.
A bug was corrected where data from a collection of VTK files grouped together with a visit file could not be clipped when the files contained PolyData and the first file had no cells or points.
Enhancements:
The Parallel interactive pdebug host profile for Jadeita at Lawrence Livermore National Laboriatory was modified to set the number of nodes and the time limit.
The Parallel interactive pdebug host profile for Agate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboriatory was modified to set the time limit.
The ANSYS reader was improved support for more general kinds of NBLOCK format strings.
Host profiles were added for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboriatories' Rztopaz system.
The GUI performance was improved on databases with large numbers of variables. One of the effects of this change is that expressions which are normally automatically created by VisIt can be disabled. If this happens, you will be presented with a warning message that it has occurred and some actions you may take, if desired, to override it. We believe this will impact very few users.
Changes:
Build_visit was modified to no longer apply a patch to Python when using the Intel compiler since the patch is now included in the version of Python we are using.
Build_visit was modified to always set the rpath when building Python, not just when using the gcc compiler.

New in VisIt 2.12.2 (Apr 8, 2017)

Bugs fixed:
A bug was corrected with the BOUT++ database reader, where holes in the mesh or other artifacts would appear when two adjacent radial rows in the mesh had the exact same zshift values.
A bug was corrected where VisIt would sometimes go into scalable rendering mode and then immediately go back out again, resulting in a blank image.
A memory leak was eliminated from the Radial Resample operator.
A bug was corrected in the Silo database reader where it would invalidate all the objects in the database when it encountered multi-block objects for which no block-level sub-objects exist. Although this problem is corrected, attempts to open any such poorly constructed Silo file can lead to unacceptable performance issues simply opening a file. Such Silo files are considered invalid.
A bug was corrected in the Silo database reader where fuzzy logic to match multi-vars to multi-meshes was getting inadvertently triggered even for multi-var objects that correctly specified their multi-mesh via the DBOPT_MMESH option.
The Silo database reader was modified to remove logic to skip empty single-block mesh and variable objects from getting added to database metadata to ensure the existence of such objects does not vary with time.
Enhancements:
VisIt was ported to and installed on Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories' Rzgenie and Rztrona systems.
Host profiles were added for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboriatories' Ansel, Jadeita and Mica systems.
Host profiles were removed for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories' Rzalastor, Rzcereal and Rzthriller systems, which were retired.
The SubdivideQuads operator is now included by default. It is located in the Geometry category in the Operators menu. The operator subdivides quadrilateral surface elements and is typically used to eliminate rendering artifacts that occur in some situations.
The custom lancher for LLNL's borax, quartz, rzgenie, rztrona, agate and jade systems was modified to add the paths to the MPI libraries to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH so that VisIt would launch in parallel even if the user didn't have the LD_LIBRARY_PATH set properly.
Support for point and cell data was added to the Radial Resample operator.
Changes:
Setting HAVE_LIBXXX for thirdparty libraries have been moved out of the root CMakeLists.txt file and into the SetUpThirdParty macro, except for the few that use a label other than HAVE_LIBXXX (like Nektar++ which uses HAVE_NEKTAR_PP, where the HAVE_ flag is set in the Find module instead.

New in VisIt 2.12.1 (Jan 20, 2017)

New in VisIt 2.12.0 (Nov 10, 2016)

General features:
The integration with SeedMe.org has been improved. A window was added to the graphical user interface to easily upload, share data and create videos from image sequences. Go to "File->Seedme" to bring up the window in the graphical user interface. More information can be found at http://visitusers.org/index.php?title=Seedme.
Advanced features:
The experimental merge_tree, split_tree, and local_threshold expressions were added to VisIt. They are serial-only implementations for segmentation using the topology of a scalar field. The merge_tree and split_tree expressions take an input scalar and create a new scalar field with segmentation labels. The local_threshold expression takes a scalar field and a segmentation label and applies a local threshold metric to create a new scalar field.
Numpy is now included in VisIt's Python interpreter.
File format reader changes:
The Cosmos++ database reader has been updated with new features and bug fixes.
Fixed a bug in the Exodus database reader with the node ordering of hex27 elements.
Several of the ASCII-based database readers (PlainText, Curve2D, Lines, Rect, etc.) were upgraded to support on-the-fly decompression via gzstream. This means VisIt can directly read a gzip'd input file in these formats. Previously, this would have been handled through VisIt's ZipWrapper database reader but this new apporach is simpler and more efficient for simple ASCII-based files. This capability does not currently extend to ASCII-based formats that are read via other libraries such as VTK, MFEM, etc. In addition, as part of this enhancement VisIt's Save Window feature can now save gzip'd compressed curve formats. In this case, the quality slider selects the gzip level in the range [1..9]. Some of the ASCII Export Database formats were also enhanced.
Changes to VisIt's plots:
Enhanced the Pseudocolor plot to allow specifying the endpoints of lines independently. The Pseudocolor attributes in the Python scripting interface have also changed as a result of this. The endPointType and endPointStyle fields have been replaced with tailStyle and headStyle (which can be one of None, Spheres, Cones).
Fixed a bug with the Pseudocolor plot where displaying lines from the IntegralCurve operator as tubes could cause some of the lines to disappear.
Fixed a bug with the Pseudocolor plot where displaying lines as ribbons would cause the engine to crash.
Changes to VisIt's picks and queries:
Fixed a bug with the XRay Image Query where giving bad variable names would cause the engine to crash.
Other bugs fixed:
Fixed a bug where simulations instrumented with Libsim using a batch-style integration would crash when evaluating expressions.
Fixed a bug with simulations instrumented with Libsim using a batch-style integration were not able to use operator-created variables.
Fixed a bug where exporting streamlines caused the engine to crash because it was trying to save integral curve objects that no longer existed.
Fixed a crash with some of the parallel Python simulation examples.
Configuration changes:
VisIt was ported to and installed on Los Alamos National Laboratories' Trinity system. A host profile was added for running in client/server mode from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Build changes:
build_visit was enhanced to build version 1.2.4 of the SeedMe Python Client.
Fixed a bug with build_visit building GDAL on OSX 10.11
Fixed a bug with build_visit building XDMF where XDMF_SYSTEM_ZLIB and XDMF_SYSTEM_LIBXML2 where incorrectly set to OFF. They are now set to ON, to indicate that we are getting those libraries from the VTK build.
Fixed make install to install the correct OSX Qt frameworks and libraries.

New in VisIt 2.10.1 (Mar 30, 2016)

Bugs fixed:
The VisItAddPlot() function in Libsim was incorrectly using the global "Apply operators to all plots" setting when creating plots. The behavior for VisItAddPlot() has been changed so new plots are not created with previously applied operators to more closely match the operation of the VisIt CLI.
Large tecplot files can now be read on Windows.
A potential memory overwrite was fixed in the Fortran visitgetenv function in Libsim.
Fixed a bug where the QT4 include and archive files were missing after doing a 'make install'.
Re-enabled adaptive csg discretization for Windows, which was inadvertently disabled for previous release.
Fixed a bug with the PF3D database plugin where the time and cycle were reported as zero for all the time states accessed after the initial time state accessed.
Fixed a bug preventing the reading of DOS-formatted .visit files on Linux.
Fixed bug whereby setting 'ssh command' would not work correctly on Windows. If the path to ssh contains spaces, the full path and command need to be surrounded in double-quotes, eg "C:\Program Files (x86)\Putty\plink.exe". If manually adding this to an .xml host profile, the quotes and path-separators should be escaped: "\"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Putty\\plink.exe\"".
Fixed a bug opening Silo files larger than 4 Gbytes on Windows.
Fixed the tensorVectorMult bug in the SPH Resample Operator found by Cody Raskin.
Fixed a bug that prevented the SPH Resample Operator from working with the Volume Plot.
Fixed handling of buggy mmesh_name member of multi-block objects in Silo files.
Enhancements:
VisIt now permits the -socket-bridge-host command line argument to override the host name passed to compute engines when VCL starts a socket bridge. This is useful for login nodes that are attached to multiple network interfaces such as on BlueGene/Q where compute nodes may need to attach to the socket bridge host (typically the LAC node) using an alias.
The PF3D database plugin was enhanced so that it reads the new multi level file format.
The SPH Resample Operator now supports zone-centered data.
VTK's higher order elements are now exposed via Libsim.
The Silo database plugin now supports all-empty multi-block objects.
The interpretation of "_meshtv_searchpath" and "_visit_searchpath" was changed in the Silo database plugin. If the search path is blank it will now be ignored instead of causing the plugin to ignore all variables located in subdirectories. The plugin will now ignore all variables located in subdirectories when the search path contains a path that doesn't exist in the Silo file. This change in behavior was necessitated when we discovered that codes had been unintentionally outputting Silo files with blank search paths for years. Because the Silo plugin wasn't handling a blank search path properly, this never caused a problem. When the behavior was fixed in VisIt 2.10, VisIt no longer displayed the variables in the subdirectories in its menus when it encountered such a file. Since we couldn't fix all the existing files, we decided to change the interpretation of the search path in VisIt.
The pre-built Ubuntu distributions now contain support for reading ITAPS files.
The PDB Z File database plugin was enhanced to support marker meshes and variables.
The MFEM database plugin was updated to use MFEM 3.1, which provides support for MFEM AMR meshes. See http://mfem.org/ for more details.
The ADIOS database plugin was upgraded to use ADIOS 1.9.0.

New in VisIt 2.10 (Oct 30, 2015)

New in VisIt 2.9.2 (Jun 18, 2015)

Bugs fixed:
Libsim functions VisItSaveWindow, VisItExportDatabase, and newer functions for adding and managing plots were only functional in batch mode. This update fixes the affected functions so they are also functional when VisIt interactively connects to the simulation.
The Fortran bindings for Libsim have been corrected so that the visitsetupenv2 and visitgetenv functions are named appropriately.
Some small memory leaks in Libsim's batch mode have been corrected.
Plots which show polygonal data (such as Pseudocolor) were not showing the right data on the right cells for cell-centered fields for 2D datasets that contain line cells in addition to polygonal cells.
The image_pan parameters to the XRay Image query are no longer truncated to integer values.
The Label plot's display of logical indices was fixed for multi-block data with varying dimensions per block.
The IndexSelect operator's Wrap option will now work correctly for domain-decomposed data.
Enhancements:
The graphical user interface for the XRay Image query was updated to use the new view description as well as support the background intensity parameter.
The XRay Image query was enhanced to also output the path length field when outputting in rawfloat or bov format. The intensities will be in the files output00.bov - outputXX.bov and the path lengths will be in the files outputYY.bov - outputZZ.bov, where XX is nBins-1, YY is nBins and ZZ is 2*nBins-1.
The XRay Image query was enhanced to support output file familying. When file familying is enabled the output files are named outputXXXX.YY.EXT, where XXXX is the family number, YY is the bin number, and EXT is the output file type extension. Furthermore, when file familying is enabled, the query will not overwrite existing files. When file familying is disabled, the output file outputYY.EXT will be overwritten each time the query is run, consistent with the previous behavior. File familying is controlled with the family_files setting to the query from the command line interface and with the Family output files setting in the graphical user interface. The default is for file familying to be disabled when using the command line interface and for file familying to be enabled when using the graphical user interface.
The XRay Image query was enhanced to support outputting the bounds of the ray bundle to a VTK file to aid in verification of the setup of the rays. The rays will be output to the file "ray_bounds.vtk". The setup can be verified by adding a Mesh plot of "mesh" from the file "ray_bounds.vtk" to the object to be xrayed. Outputting the bounds of the ray bundle is controlled with the output_ray_bounds setting to the query from the command line interface and with the Output ray bounds setting in the graphical user interface.
Added support for FELINESEG type in Tecplot plugin.
The command line interface no longer starts automatically when the file "visitrc" exists in the users ".visit" directory. The command line interface will now start on-demand when the user brings up the Macros window or the Macros window is posted or set to be visible on startup.
The Maintain view limits setting on the Advanced tab in the View window is now also saved when saving settings, not just when saving a session.
Changes for VisIt developers:
Support was added for using the CUDA profiler. The CUDA profiler is enabled with the "-nvprof" command line option, for example, to launch the serial engine with the CUDA profiler use "visit -nvprof engine_ser".

New in VisIt 2.9.1 (May 7, 2015)

New in VisIt 2.9 (Mar 10, 2015)

General features:
VisIt was ported to BlueGene/Q. The build_visit_BGQ script can be used to build a statically linked version of VisIt's server components for use on BlueGene/Q.
VisIt was integrated with SeedMe.org. It is now possible to easily share your visualizations results via the SeedMe python module, which is now included in VisIt's CLI. See the Seedme examples wiki page on visitusers.org, the SeedMe programatic guide and the SeedMe command line guide for examples.
Advanced features:
Libsim was enhanced so that it provides a VisItRestoreSession() function which can be used to set up visualizations for a simulation that is run in batch mode. VisIt can be run normally to connect interactively to the simulation to set up plots and save a session file. The session file that gets created can be used to set up plots for subsequent batch-only simulation runs. Once plots have been set up via VisItRestoreSession(), the VisItSaveWindow() function can be used to save images.
Libsim was enhanced so it provides a VisItExportDatabase() function which can be used to export the active plots in a simulation that is run in batch mode. This function enables users to automatically export processed geometry from libsim.
Libsim's plot and operator creation functions have been enhanced to use the viewercore library so that they can faithfully set up plots as the viewer would do it. This ensures that the functions work using tried and true VisIt code. Internally within libsim, the viewercore library uses VisIt engine components directly to produce the data needed by the plots.
VisIt's network communication was enhanced to provide an optional fixed size buffer socket communication mode. This option enables VisIt to connect to machines which expect fixed size send/recv buffers.
Libsim's Fortran interface was modified to include the VisItGetMixedVariable function. This change will require users of the Fortran interface to include the VisItGetMixedVariable stub function in their code to enable building. See the Fortran simulation examples in DataManualExamples for reference.
A global preference was added that tells VisIt to automatically remove duplicate nodes from fully disconnected unstructured grids. This preference is off by default, and can be changed in the GUI's Options->Preferences window or via SetRemoveGlobalNodes(0|1) via the CLI. This preference is saved with other settings. This new preference subsumes the behavior introduced in 2.8 series where the VTK reader would perform this duplicate node removal for .vtu files without user intervention.
VisIt's Parallel Integral Curve System (PICS) was enhanced to add higher-order element support for time varying Nektar++ and Nek5000 databases.
Libsim was enhanced so the VisItAddPlot() and VisItAddOperator() functions can create plots and operators, enabling programmatic setup of a scene for in situ visualization and data export.
Libsim was extended with the VisItSetPlotOptions*() and VisItSetOperatorOptions*() functions that allow plot and operator attributes to be set. Each family of functions enables callers to set plot and operator attribute data from a simulation. The functions essentially use key/value pairs to set plot and operator attributes (e.g. VisItSetPlotOptionsS("colorTableName", "hot_desaturated")). The keys are the names of the fields in the plot attribute state objects.
Changes in GUI behavior:
The 'Set save options' window now has a 'Save and Dismiss' button, which performs a 'Save Window', then dismisses the options window. This is the same behavior that used to be provided by the 'Save' button. The 'Save' button is still present, but no longer dismisses the window.
File format reader changes:
Material, including mixing material, support was added to the Exodus plugin. Common conventions for the naming of material volume fraction data and material specific parts of mesh variables are pre-defined. In addition, users can define their own custom variable naming conventions. These features are controlled by database options a user can set when opening Exodus files.
Exodus ElementBlock decomposition is now served up by the Exodus plugin as an Enumerated Scalar instead of a material.
Added read options to the Exodus plugin to turn off auto-detection of composite variables.
When the Exodus plugin auto-detects composite variables, it now defines expressions for them instead of advertising them as database variables.
Improved the auto-detection logic of composite variables in the Exodus plugin.
Improved support for cell-centered data in newer versions of Tecplot binary files.
The MFEM database plugin was updated to support version 3.0.1 of MFEM. This includes support for reading mfem_root files generated from the MFEM library.
A database reader was added to read Nektar++ databases.
Changes to VisIt's plots version:
Enhanced the wireframe option for the subset plot of blocks to also outline the internal domains if the "Draw Internal Surfaces" option is checked.
Enumerated scalar variables can now be plotted with the Subset and Label plots.
Changes to VisIt's expression language:
The zonetype expression was been deprecated. Instead use either zonetype_label or zonetype_rank expressions. The zonetype_label expression behaves much like the now deprecated zonetype expression except that it creates labels three characters in length instead of one. The new zonetype_rank expression assigns an integer value to each zone based on the zone's celltype using a PATRAN-like rank ordering; first by topological dimension and then by node count.
Changes to VisIt's picks and queries:
Pick Window's 'SaveAs' now saves the pick letter.
The XRay Image query now supports specifying background intensities. The background intensity may be specified as a single value for all the bins or on a per bin basis.
Other bugs fixed:
Setting the Contour Plot's MultiColor via a python script no longer results in an indexing or out of range error.
Fixed a bug with invalid arguments being sent to visit_composite during templated movie making.
Fixed the Histogram plot so that individual bins can count up to the largest integer that can be stored in a double.
The visual representations for the Line, Sphere, and Box tools have been fixed so that they are once again visible.
The Contour plot's invertColorTable setting was not stored in session files.
Lineout produced no data when applied after Displace operator.
Fixed a bug where VisIt internally would not handle 3D surface meshes consisting of 2D quadratic elements.
Fixed a bug where Silo reader would crash the engine if it encountered a ucdmesh object with no topological entities defined (e.g. not zonelist, facelist, edgelist or phzonelist). In this case, the reader will now load up the mesh as a point mesh.
Pick returned the incorrect information for abitrary polyhedral meshes.
Fixed a bug with OnionPeel of a Mesh Plot with the 'show internal' option turned on.
Build features:
The build visit script now builds boost. Previously if a system version of boost was not found VisIt would default to an internal version. This default behavior is no longer the case and the user must specify the --boost flag to build boost. This change was to support additional databases that use both boost headers and libraries.
The following databases depend on boost: Chombo, Exodus, H5Part, Miranda, Nektar++, Nek5000, paraDIS, paraDis_tecplot, SAS.
The --all-io flag will now build all the I/O libraries on an optional basis instead of stopping when a library fails to build. Specifically, when using the build_visit script with the --all-io flag, all I/O libraries will be attempted to be built. However, if a library fails to build, the failure will be reported in the log file and the build script will continue. Previously, the build script would stop. As such, one should review the build log for possible unexpected failures. The same applies to building VisIt - check the log to make sure the optional databases are built. If you need a third party library for a database reader that you definitely want built, then you should explicitly add that library's flag to the build script so it will be forced to be built. If the library fails to build it, the script will stop.
The build_visit script was enhanced with a --xdb command line argument that enables the user to enable FieldView XDB output.
Changes for VisIt developers:
The viewer library was split into 2 parts: viewercore, and viewer. The viewercore library contains much of the viewer's machinery but it has NO Qt DEPENDENCIES so it can be used in other contexts that do not rely on Qt. The viewer library contains all of the Qt-specific code, which includes Qt vis windows, action UI's, socket notifiers, timers, information boxes, etc. The viewer creates objects via a ViewerFactory class and depending on whether -nowin is given it creates objects suitable for nowin mode or objects suitable for a Qt GUI mode. As a result of the split, the viewer in general was greatly changed internally. Outside of the viewer, there should be no obvious changes and embedded viewer applications and PySide applications should continue to work as before.
The xml2info and xml2cmake tools were modified to generate engine and viewer plugin information that has a shared "viewerengine" base class. The base class contains all functionality that needs to be shared by both classes of plug-ins. The additional viewer functionality now exposed to the engine plug-ins allows most viewer functions to be satisfied by engine plug-ins, as is the case when libsim is used in batch mode.
The xml2avt tool was modified to create the ExecuteData method with the new signature that uses avtDataRepresentation instead of vtkDataSet, domain and label.
An option for specifying help text for database options was added.
A help button and additional window for displaying help text was added to the GUI to support database options help.
The failure mode of avtDatabaseMetaData::DetermineVarType() was changed to return AVT_UNKNOWN_TYPE instead of excepting out.
The makemovie python script was changed so that visitmovietemplate.py can be correctly found from a development version on Windows.
Nameschemes now support a kind of recursive definition in that a string-valued conversion specifier in a Namescheme can itself be controlled by another, different namescheme. This feature is now being used in the Exodus plugin for nameschemes for material volume fraction data.
Fixed some overruns on the src buffer in several memcpy calls in avtUnstructuredDomainBoundaries::ExchangeMixedMaterial.
The avtMaterial constructor for full-zonal volume fraction arrays was improved to behave better in the presence of numerically likely but nonetheless mal-formed volume fractions.
avtMaterial will now check and assert correct structure in debug builds.
Some new exodus test datasets were added thanks to John Niederhaus.
New exodus tests were added for material data.
Added the full path to the szip and zlib libraries for both OSX and Linux in the bv_cgns.sh build_visit support file.

New in VisIt 2.8.2 (Dec 10, 2014)

Configuration changes:
A host profile was added for LLNL's Surface system.
A host profile was added for LLNL's Rzgpu system.
The host profile for LLNL's Edge system was deleted.
The default bank was changed from "bbronze" to "wbronze" for all the hosts in the LLNL closed network configuration.
Bugs fixed:
A node ordering issue for quadratic elements in Exodus files was corrected.
VisIt is once again able to read multi-file Exodus files.
The internal launcher was modified so that by default it does not pass -ppn to mpiexec and mpirun when launching a parallel job. If the user needs to have the internal launcher pass -ppn to those commands then they will need to override that behavior in a custom launcher.
Lineouts that do not intersect the plot no longer issue a 'No input' error message for each successive lineout. The previous behavior of issuing a 'yielded no data' status message for only the lineouts that do not intersect a plot has been restored.
An issue where blocks in subset plots were not correctly outlined when the wireframe option is selected was corrected.
Pseudocolor plots of nodal variables defined on structured multi block meshes no longer crash the compute engine.
An issue generating structured ghost data that could cause a Filled Boundary plot of an AMR mesh to crash the compute engine was corrected.
The VisIt launching script was modified so that arguments that it adds to the argument list are added at the beginning of the list instead of the end of the list so that argument passing for scripts works properly.
VisIt now uses significantly less memory when processing CSG meshes with many regions. In one instance, a subset plot of a CSG mesh consisting of about 36000 spheres that was using over 250 gigabytes is now using about half a gigabyte.
VisIt no longer crashes when discretizing CSG meshes with the Multi-Pass method when the number of boundaries in a region exceeds an internal limit. It now issues a warning message and tries the uniform discretization method.
Enhancements:
The zonetype expression now produces labels that are 3 characters long. It also supports most of the VTK element types.
The XRay Image query now supports specifying the image view with the full generality of the 3d view for plots. The new view parameters currently can only be specified through the Python scripting interface.
Several improvements were made to the Exodus database reader. These include:
Improving the automatic format detection of by adding *.ex.#.# and variants as extension patterns for Exodus files.
Adding support for meshes with arbitrary polyhedral elements.
Adding support for global node and element numbers.
Several improvements were made to the ViSUS IDX database reader. These include:
Always using view-dependent data loading for clipping, which reduces I/O.
Forcing the manual selection of the hz level for 3D datasets when the MultiresControl operator is used.
Adding support for midx metavolumes that facilitate mixing heterogeous volumes and remote data sources.
The Multi-Pass CSG discretization method was enhanced to only process duplicate boundary surfaces once. This results in better quality discretizations, a reduction in the amount of memory used, and an improvement in processing speed.
Changes for VisIt developers:
The NERSC custom launcher was modified so that the internal launcher will pass -ppn to the mpiexec and mpirun commands when launching parallel jobs.

New in VisIt 2.8.1 (Nov 27, 2014)

New in VisIt 2.7.3 (Jun 9, 2014)

New in VisIt 2.7.2 (Mar 21, 2014)

Configuration changes:
A launch profile was added to the host profile for LLNL's max system for using the pvis partition.
A launch profile was added to the host profile for LLNL's zin system for using the pvis partition.
Bugs fixed:
Creating database correlations on Windows from the CLI, when databases are opened using relative paths, has been fixed.
Session files with time varying data can be restored via the CLI with different sources and have their time sliders work correctly.
An engine crash on Windows was fixed when cmfe expressions were passed an invalid filename.
A bug was fixed where a plot got put in perpetual 'pending' state when NamedSelections' 'Automatially apply updated selections' was checked before the selection had been applied to a plot.
VisIt's Annotation window has been fixed so that it is once again possible to select axis tick marks that are both inside and outside of the 3D bounding box.
The silent uninstall option on Windows (/S from command-line) now works again.
A problem with material selection in plots from files containing a mix of multi-block and single-block meshes at the same dir-level and also containing standard block grouping was corrected (ticket #866) .
The internallauncher was modified to correct a bug where the -N option was improperly set when using aprun to launch VisIt. Thanks Jean Favre for the fix.
The 2D and 3D zoom interactors once again unzoom the image when pressing the Ctrl key and the left mouse button.
Making movies with movie templates works again on Windows.
A small number of errors were fixed in the visit-install script. The "arl" and "asu" configurations are now supported with the "-c" option. The help text is now up-to-date and the configuration options are now listed in alphabetical order.
The ADIOS reader was fixed so that it now properly reads 3D uniform and rectilinear meshes.
A bug was fixed with a previous fix to the OnionPeel operater in VisIt 2.7.1 where it didn't properly handle the case where the seed cell was specified as a global cell number and material interface reconstruction was applied.
A bug with material indexing related to phony materials in the CaleHDF5 database reader was resolved.
Enhancements:
The Cosmos++ reader has been extended so that accepts either combined or separate grid and data files. When static meshes are used, a single grid dump can now be provided, regardless of the number of data dumps.
Two new 2D quad mesh quality metrics (min_corner_area and min_sin_corner) were added.
Changes for VisIt developers:
The build_visit script was modified to build MPICH 3.0.4 instead of 3.0.1 so that MPICH would build on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 systems.
The build_visit script was modified so that the MPICH library it builds is compatible with the Uintah library.
The build system was modified to add -DMPI_NO_CPPBIND and -DMPICH_SKIP_MPICXX to VISIT_PARALLEL_CFLAGS and VISIT_PARALLEL_CXXFLAGS so that the xdmf_writer sample programs could be built with more versions of MPI.

New in VisIt 2.7.1 (Jan 22, 2014)

Bugs fixed:
The VTK reader was fixed so that non-integral ORIGIN specifications for StructuredPoints datasets are handled correctly.
The BOUT reader was fixed so that it will work properly when VisIt is started in a directory other than the one containing the data files.
The OnionPeel operater was modified to properly handle the case where the seed cell was specified as a global cell number and material interface reconstruction was applied.
The OpenFOAM reader now accepts '*.foam' files as long as they are in the same directory as the controlDict.
Sampling options have been added to the Lineout query widget. They apply on a per-lineout basis and override the global settings available in the Controls->Lineout window.
Memory leaks in the viewer related to operator-created-expressions have been fixed.
Running the python interpreter no longer fails when running a version of Vist that is not the newest one installed when more than one version of VisIt is installed in the same location.
A bug that could cause opening a Nek5000 file to fail if the user had a visit config file saved from version 2.6.x has been corrected.
Tickmarks and gridlines are now properly drawn when saving a window in non screen-capture mode.
Enhancements:
The basic NetCDF reader was enhanced to load zone-centered variants of all variables under the 'as_zonal' submenu.
The BOUT reader was enhanced so that it will read grids with a circular geometry and grids with two X points.
Changes for VisIt developers:
The windows source distribution has been fixed so that a binary distribution can be sucessfully build from it (the _PACKAGE target).
An AMRTest reader was added that demonstrates how to create a simple AMR database reader. It generates the data internally. To use the reader you should create a zero length file that ends with ".amrtest" and open it. It has 6 levels and has a single variable that creates a Mandelbrot image. It also works with the 2d multi resolution capabilities. To invoke them bring up the "Rendering options" window and select "Multi resolution for 2d AMR data" on the "Basic" tab.