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CFD-VIEW User Tips

Tracking Multiple Variables with Multiple Legends

When post-processing with CFD-VIEW, one may wish to display two different variables on two different objects. This requires the use of two legends to correspond to the different color mapping of the variables. The legend tracking feature in CFD-VIEW can be used to achieve this. If this topic is of interest to you, please read on.

Legend Tracking

A thermal plasma torch case that includes the effects of radiation heat transfer is used to demonstrate the feature of legend tracking.

For example, the user wishes to display the magnetic vector potential, represented by symbol Az_r in units of Wb/m, in the solid volume conditions named ‘Coil_1’, ‘Coil_2’, and ‘Coil_3’ and the fluid volume condition named ‘Coil-Fluid.’ At the same time, say the user plots the temperature, represented by symbol T in units of K, in the fluid volume conditions called ‘Quartz’ and ‘Fluid.’ To show the range of values for the variables Az_r and T respectively, two legends are needed.

Perform the following steps in CFD-VIEW to create two legends with different tracking.

Control select (Ctrl-select) the objects named ‘Coil_1’, ‘Coil_2’, ‘Coil_3’ and ‘Air'’, and pick the variable ‘Az_r’ from the color variable list. Select the ‘Smooth Surface’ attribute for shading the selected objects with the magnetic vector potential Az_r.

Figure 1. Magnetic Vector Potential display
Turn on the ‘Legend’ from the operator palette. Right-click on the legend and uncheck the ‘Track Active Map’ option. Turning off this feature ensures that the legend for the magnetic vector potential variable does not switch to temperature when plotting the temperature variable on other objects.

Figure 2. Legend tracking
Control-select (Ctrl-select) the objects named ‘Quartz’ and ‘Argon’, and pick the variable ‘T’ from the color variable list. Select the ‘Smooth Surface’ attribute for shading the selected objects with the temperature. Pick a different colormap for the temperature from the colormap/samples panel to contrast the contours of temperature from those of the magnetic vector potential. Create another legend for the temperature.

Figure 3. Temperature and Magnetic Vector Potential display

You can find the file used in this user tip in the CFD Model Library section here.

If you have any questions about this topic or would like us to discuss other topics in the future, please let us know.

Regards,
ESI CFD Support Team

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