ParaView

Category

Visualization, Data analysis

Description

ParaView is an open-source, multi-platform data analysis and visualization application. ParaView users can quickly build visualizations to analyze their data using qualitative and quantitative techniques. The data exploration can be done interactively in 3D or programmatically using ParaView’s batch processing capabilities. ParaView was developed to analyze extremely large datasets using distributed memory computing resources. It can be run on supercomputers to analyze datasets of petascale size as well as on laptops for smaller data, has become an integral tool in many national laboratories, universities and industry, and has won several awards related to high performance computation.

Available versions (Euler, old software stack)

Legacy versions	Supported versions	New versions
	4.1.0	5.5.0_osr, 5.5.2_gui, 5.6.0

Please note that this page refers to installations from the old software stack. There are two software stacks on Euler. Newer versions of software are found in the new software stack.

Environment modules (Euler, old software stack)

Version	Module load command	Additional modules loaded automatically
4.1.0	module load qt/4.8.4 python/2.7.6 ffmpeg/2.3.3 r/3.0.2 open_mpi/1.6.5 netcdf/4.3.1 paraview/4.1.0	openblas/0.2.13_seq szip/2.1 hdf5/1.8.12 legacy centos_cruft/6
5.5.0_osr	module load new gcc/4.8.2 open_mpi/1.6.5 python/2.7.6 bzip2/1.0.6 szip/2.1 zlib/1.2.8 boost/1.57.0 paraview/5.5.0_osr	openblas/0.2.13_seq legacy
5.5.2_gui	module load new gcc/4.8.2 mesa/12.0.6 open_mpi/1.6.5 qt/5.8.0 hdf5/1.8.12 netcdf/4.3.2 boost/1.62.0 ffmpeg/2.3.3 lz4/1.8.2 eigen/3.2.1 glew/2.1.0 jsoncpp/1.8.4 protobuf/3.6.0 sqlite/3.15.0 paraview/5.5.2_gui	python/2.7.6 openblas/0.2.13_seq szip/2.1 hdf5/1.8.12
5.6.0	module load new gcc/4.8.2 mesa/12.0.6 paraview/5.6.0

Please note that this page refers to installations from the old software stack. There are two software stacks on Euler. Newer versions of software are found in the new software stack.

Interactive session

You can start the graphical user interface (GUI) of ParaView on one of the login nodes of Euler. This can be useful to visualize and browse data. In order to start the GUI of ParaView on a login node, you first need to establish an SSH connection with X11 forwarding enabled.

ssh -Y username@hostname

With username being your ETH username.

Interactive session with ParaView 4.1.0

First you need to load the required modules

module load qt/4.8.4 python/2.7.6 ffmpeg/2.3.3 r/3.0.2 open_mpi/1.6.5 netcdf/4.3.1 paraview/4.1.0

and then you can start the GUI with the paraview command.

paraview

Please only use the GUI for looking at your data. Computation need to be submitted through the batch system.

Interactive session with ParaView 5.5.2

For starting an interactive session with ParaView 5.5.2, you would need to load the following modules

module load new gcc/4.8.2 mesa/12.0.6 open_mpi/1.6.5 qt/5.8.0 hdf5/1.8.12 netcdf/4.3.2 boost/1.62.0 ffmpeg/2.3.3 lz4/1.8.2 eigen/3.2.1 glew/2.1.0 jsoncpp/1.8.4 protobuf/3.6.0 sqlite/3.15.0 paraview/5.5.2_gui

then you can start the GUI with the paraview command

paraview

When connecting from a Linux client to the cluster, the GUI works without problems. Because the implementation of the X libraries on Mac (XQuartz) and Windows (Xming, Cygwin/X, MobaXterm) is incomplete and misses the MIT-SHM extension, the GUI won't work. As a workaround, we recommend to install Ubuntu in a virtualbox VM and connect to the Euler cluster from there.

Installing Ubuntu on a VM in a Mac: https://www.dev2qa.com/how-to-install-ubuntu-on-virtualbox-mac/

Installing Ubuntu on a VM on Windows: https://itsfoss.com/install-linux-in-virtualbox/

This workaround has been tested on a Mac and resolved the issue. To avoid this workaround, we strongly recommend to use ParaView 5.6.0.

Interactive session with ParaView 5.6.0

Due to the issues that arised, when using ParaView 5.5.2 with a Mac or Windows computer, we decided to install precompiled binaries for ParaView 5.6.0. For starting an interactive session with ParaView 5.6.0, you would need to load the following modules

module load new gcc/4.8.2 mesa/12.0.6 paraview/5.6.0

then you can start the GUI with one of the following 3 paraview commands:

paraview --mesa

paraview --mesa-llvm

paraview --mesa-swr

The mesa parameter determines, which rendering engine is used.

License information

3-clause BSD license
List of additional licenses

Links

http://www.paraview.org

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ParaView
https://github.com/Kitware/ParaView
https://blog.kitware.com
https://twitter.com/Kitware?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor