FieldView 12.3

Improve the productivity of your CFD workflow. Ask more questions, dig deeper into your data, and still get your results faster. FieldView 12.3 makes it easier than ever to work with complex data and harness compute resources to get your results quickly.

FieldView 12.3 continues the drive to increase your productivity and ability to work with rapidly increasing volumes of data. Easy to use functionality for large and complex data will save you time. Features are designed to provide short paths to rapid understanding of your data. Download and try FieldView 12.3 today.

In This Release:
  • Ease of Use for FieldView Parallel
  • Unrolled cylindrical surfaces
  • Batch licensing
  • Large data - 10,000 grids: variable grid count through transient sequences; fast reads of boundary only data
  • 2D plotting integrated with Dynamic Clipping
  • PYTHON integration improvements
  • OVERFLOW-2 and Pratt & Whitney Common File Format Readers
  • FieldView server fixes

Login to the Customer Support Center to access the FieldView 12.3 download.

Ease of Use and Visibility for FieldView Parallel
FieldView Parallel capabilities are available directly from the data input menu. For systems with multiple CPUs, the 'three-for-free' operation is automatically available, and if you have already purchased a FieldView Parallel license, you will be able to select and run it directly without having to create a parallel server configuration file.

  • We have added several new options for making parallel server configuration files easier. For example, we have provided specific options to handle the situation where it is necessary to tunnel thru to a port to run FieldView.
  • We have additionally provided support for FieldView Parallel operation on WINDOWS HPC cluster systems.
  • New tools make diagnosing parallel problems much easier, by sending server configuration and timing information directly to the FieldView console window.

Unrolled Cylindrical Surfaces
This feature lets you unroll cylindrical isosurfaces flat to the screen. Independent horizontal and vertical scaling of your unrolled surfaces is also possible.


Rotational duplication of a blade passage, unrolled to view as flat surface with increased visibility

New Batch-only licensing saves time & money using HPC resources for automated post-processing!

Large scale utilization of HPC resources is enabled with the new batch-only licensing capabilities in FieldView 12.3. Using this feature, run several instances of FieldView on your server for concurrent post-processing. For example, run the same script to generate images and calculations on a series of datasets in a design space all at the same time. If you are already using automation, batch-only licensing may be an economical and convenient way to increase your throughput at low cost. And, if you are not using automated post-processing, maybe now is a good time to get started!

Batch-only FieldView has all of the features and functions of standard FieldView, except that the GUI and graphics window display are surpressed. Scripts, restarts and/or FVX are used to control post-processing and images, movies, numerical results, exports and XDBs can all be created. If a graphics board is present it will be used, otherwise FieldView renders with software. This makes for easy operation on cluster resources.

Licensing is implemented via a new FieldView password type. A key feature of batch licensing is the price: batch-only licenses are heavily discounted and sold in 'packs' of 5, 10, 20 and 200. Low software costs means that users are free to run hundreds of concurrent jobs at a fraction of the cost of licensing standalone FieldView. Batch-only licenses can be configured with the license server daemon on the head node of a cluster, separate from the daemon that manages your desktop licenses.

Contact your local sales representative today to get a temporary batch-only license pack and try it yourself.

Additional Large Data Support

  • FieldView 12.3 now supports datasets with up to 10,000 grids. And, the number of grids for PLOT3D datasets are now allowed to change from one timestep to the next for transient cases. This responds to specific requests by some of our large data customers.

  • A faster path to first pictures - In many cases, it is sufficient to only examine the boundary data within a dataset. By limiting the data read operation to look at only the boundary surfaces and not the entire volume of a dataset, a significant saving in time can be obtained. In some of our own tests on this feature, reductions in the time to read just the boundaries were seen to be on the order of 15X to 20X.

    Reading Boundary data only is available for the following data readers:

    • All FV-UNS Export readers
    • AcuSolve [Direct Reader]
    • FLUENT [Direct Reader]
    • FV-UNS (native FieldView Unstructured Reader)
    • HAVOC
    • LS-DYNA State Database [Direct Reader], and
    • SCRYU
    • All Unstructured Plugin (toolkit) Readers

PYTHON Integration Improvements
For automation and integration of your existing PYTHON-based automation routines, we have expanded the existing FieldView ability to for PYTHON integration. FieldView can now be used with either of the two main PYTHON versions (2 or 3) and we have extended coverage to permit FieldView to work with PYTHON on Windows platforms. A new command line switch to launch a python program directly has also been added.

New Readers
  • OVERFLOW-2 direct reader - The NASA CFD code OVERFLOW-2 is used widely by the rotorcraft, spacecraft and fixed-wing communities for design and performance analysis. OVERFLOW-2 is an evolutionary code combining established structured-grid CFD algorithms with structural dynamics, overset grid methods, RANS/Hybrid-LES turbulence modeling, high-temperature gas dynamics and chemical/contaminant transport modeling.

    Fully integrated into FieldView, the reader handles all formats (binary, unformatted, double precision) and supports all constants and extra 'q' variables. Fieldview RESTARTS, FVX, boundaries (.fvbnd files) and regions (.fvreg files) are fully supported and the reader is also fully compatible with FieldView Parallel operation for reduced turnaround time on large jobs.

  • Direct reader for the Pratt & Whitney Common File Format for all Windows platforms. All reader functionality present with the UNIX/LINUX port is available. In addition, RESTARTS, SCRIPTS and FVX programs generated on UNIX/LINUX systems will be 100% compatible with this port.

Additional Features and Changes
Several small fixes to known problems with FV servers are included with this release:

  • The Parallel Server file browsers can now list very large files.
  • A problem listing transient file series correctly has been resolved.
  • The client-server remote browsers now work as expected.
  • Server config files will work for pathnames which contain spaces.
  • plink/putty no longer uses the -n option when used as the remote shell.
  • FieldView environment variables now work correctly with parallel servers.
Login to the Customer Support Center to access the FieldView 12.3 download.