Intelligent Light FieldView 20.0 x64 (CFD Post-Processing And Visualization)

Summary

Intelligent Light FieldView 20.0 is a major release of the market-leading post-processing and visualization tool for massive-scale Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). FieldView is recognized across the aerospace, automotive, and defense industries to help engineers analyze and visualize simulations efficiently. The software is the industry’s tool of choice when engineers must deliver better results within fast design cycles, enabling users to make decisions quickly and with confidence.

Following a strategic spin-off, FieldView was transitioned to Tecplot, Inc., which now leads its commercial distribution and ongoing support. The software is designed for engineers who need to improve their decision-making capabilities and achieve better modeling results in less time.

What’s New In FieldView 20.0

FieldView 20.0 comes loaded with new capabilities and performance enhancements. The release introduces support for faster, non-encrypted XDB files to accelerate engineering workflows. More Hybrid Parallelism with Multithreading delivers up to 15x faster Vortex Cores, Surface Flows, and Formulas compared to previous versions. Building on the success of the multithreading technique introduced in FieldView 19, more features now benefit from this speedup. Vortex Cores, Separation and Re-attachment Lines, all types of Surface Flows, as well as all Formula Operators, are now computed in parallel on all threads. The multithreading works out of the box for all types of data and can be combined with MPI Parallel for even greater performance.

Performance And Speed Enhancements

It includes significant performance improvements across multiple features. Optimized Time Step Changes deliver up to an order of magnitude faster transients, sweeps and animations. Visualization objects that do not change in the next time step are now preserved whenever possible, yielding maximum time savings for animations with multiple datasets where only one changes over time.

A new source of speedups with Shaders provides 50x faster vector rendering by pushing the operation to the graphics card through a shader function. Rendering vector fields with 2D arrow heads, which makes images more readable but requires real-time alignment with the screen, is now 50 times faster. The Quicker XDB Format delivers 20% faster read and write speeds for users who want to optimize their extract-based workflow.

Improved User Interface And Usability

The graphical user interface in FieldView 20.0 has been redesigned for modern hardware and improved usability. Redesigned Icons feature a unified color scheme that makes useful information pop, helping new users more easily understand the action behind each icon, while existing users will not have to learn a new interface as icons remain similar in shape and are all in the same locations.

Native File Dialog on Windows provides a faster, full-featured browser with customizable favorites, mapped drives, and remote machines all enabled, with navigation much faster than in previous versions, especially on remote storage or in folders containing many files. The GUI also supports 4K monitors for high-resolution displays.

Advanced Visualization And Analysis Features

It introduces several advanced visualization and analysis features. Better Support for Zero Thickness Surfaces allows scalar values to be viewed on both sides of baffles, thermal shells, and other zero thickness boundary surfaces. In previous versions, one variable took precedence regardless of which side was displayed, but both sides now display the correct values.

Boundary Surface Clipping for Structured Datasets enables users to clip boundary surfaces by X, Y, and Z coordinates or by cylindrical coordinates, with the Boundary Surface panel reorganized to accommodate this new feature. The feature is also supported in FVX and Python.

File Format And Data Management

The XDB file format is central to FieldView workflows. The XDB format allows file sizes to be reduced to approximately one-tenth of the original size, making sharing convenient. The proprietary FieldView XDB contains surface and line extracts from volume data and includes information for 3D surface geometry, normals, scalar, and vector quantities.

Once it loads an XDB file, it can interactively change the view, rotate, zoom, and step through time. The XDB file format supports physical quantity changes, contour and vector display switching, animation display, and transient data. The new option for faster, non-encrypted XDBs saves I/O time for users who want to optimize their extracts-based workflow.

Industry Applications And Use Cases

It is used across multiple industries for CFD post-processing and visualization. In Aerospace Engineering, the software is used to visualize and analyze data from CFD simulations of aircraft, spacecraft, and other aerospace systems. The F18 tutorial includes basics for reading in PLOT3D data and exploring data using velocity vectors, pressure profiles, colormaps, and iso-surfaces.

In Automotive Engineering, the software is used to analyze data from CFD simulations of vehicle aerodynamics, thermal management, and other systems. The automotive tutorial demonstrates in-cylinder flow analysis using FLUENT-UNS datasets. In Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, it is used to visualize and analyze data from chemical processes and biomedical systems such as blood flow and air flow.

FAQ

Q1: What is Intelligent Light FieldView 20.0?

It is a market-leading post-processing and visualization tool for massive-scale Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) used in aerospace, automotive, and defense industries.

Q2: What’s new in FieldView 20.0?

New features include faster non-encrypted XDBs, up to 15x faster Vortex Cores processing, redesigned icons, native file dialog on Windows, and 50x faster vector rendering.

Q3: What is the XDB file format in FieldView?

XDB is the proprietary FieldView file format that reduces file size to about one-tenth, contains surface and line extracts, and supports 3D surface geometry, scalars, and vectors.

Q4: Does FieldView support GPU acceleration?

Yes. Vector rendering with 2D arrow heads is now processed on the graphics card through shader functions, making it 50 times faster.

Q5: What industries use FieldView?

It is used in aerospace, automotive, defense, chemical engineering, and biomedical engineering for CFD visualization and analysis.

Q6: Is FieldView still supported by Intelligent Light?

It was transitioned to Tecplot, Inc. in 2019, which now leads its commercial distribution and ongoing support.

Q7: Can FieldView handle transient data?

Yes. It works with transient and steady state data, with optimized time step changes providing faster animations and sweeps.

Q8: Is there a tutorial for learning FieldView?

Yes. Step-by-step tutorials are included in the FieldView User’s Guide covering aerospace, automotive, and other applications.

Technical Specifications