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ParaView

ParaView is an open-source, multi-platform data analysis and visualization application. It is widely used in scientific research for visualizing large-scale simulation and experimental data in 2D and 3D, supporting interactive exploration, quantitative analysis, and high-quality rendering. ParaView can leverage GPUs to accelerate the exploration and visualization of large datasets.

ParaView on Dartmouth's Discovery Cluster

Dartmouth OnDemand provides seamless, browser-based access to ParaView on Discovery (including GPU support). You can select the ParaView sessions and launch it as follows:

  1. Account: Select free.
  2. Partition: Choose ood by default.
  3. Number of hours: Set to 1 (or longer if needed).
  4. Num Cores: Enter 8 (as needed).
  5. Node type: Select any for fastest start time, but a100 will be better for GPU visualizations

Once your session has started, you can connect to it and use ParaView directly on the cluster, including seamless access to your data. Check out the Dartmouth OnDemand documentation for further information.

Helpful Plugins and Workflows

For advanced 3D volume renderings in ParaView, the pvNVIDIA IndeX plugin can be very helpful. To enable it, go to Tools → Manage Plugins and locate the plugin in the list. Once loaded, it allows you to leverage GPU-accelerated rendering for large volumetric datasets, improving both performance and interactivity.