ESI Group CFD Portal - Plotting Multiple Variables in the CFD-VIEW Plotter

Resources

Request Support

Community Forums

Model Library/Tutorials

CFD Paper Library

Tips and Tricks

ESI CFD FAQ

Customer Login

Home

CFD-VIEW User Tips

Plotting Multiple Variables in the CFD-VIEW Plotter

Plotting two or more variables on same plot having values of different magnitude/scale becomes difficult or many times impossible. In these cases plotting data with multiple Y-axes becomes very useful and sometimes necessary.

CFD-VIEW can plot multiple variables with multiple Y axes on same plot. The Plotter tool allows users to plot multiple variables with varying scales in the same plot. The Plotter tool In CFD-VIEW can be found under Operator Pallet -> plot.

For this tip, the ICP plasma tutorial will be used. To create a plot with multiple variables, follow these steps:

Open the DTF file in CFD-VIEW.
Select all surfaces and then color it with ‘Temperature’.

Click on legend. You can see that temperature range is from 300K to 834K

From the color pull down menu select AR+_Num_Density. It ranges from 0 to 6.24E+17

Let’s plot above two variables on the same plot. Click on ‘Line Probe’ under Operator Pallet and then select ‘Plot’.

Select ‘T’ and ‘AR+_Num_Density’ variables for Y-axis plot.

As you can see from the plot, the temperature curve is at zero and it’s impossible to see temperature variation.

To have multiple Y axes, uncheck ‘Multiple Curve Share Y Axis Scale’ option. This will now produce two Y axes.

Your plot can have any number of variables with different Y-axis scales.

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

Regards,
Kartik Shah
ESI CFD Support Team

Carpet Plots in CFD-VIEW

Carpet Plots are used for visualization of computed data on 2D surfaces. A carpet plot is created by displacing the 2D surface vertically based on one of the variables computed over that surface. The carpet plot can also be colored by the same or different variable.

Using CFD-VIEW Scripting for Transient Simulations

With the Python scripting capabilities of CFD-VIEW, you can quickly and easily perform the repetitive tasks you encounter when post-processing transient simulations.

Saving Surface Data to a View Object File

Often, it is useful or necessary to take data on a surface and perform further calculations on this data using another software package. To enable you to write this type of data, CFD-VIEW has a View Object File format ("*.vof"). CFD-VIEW uses this file format to store the X, Y, and Z locations of the nodes on the surface along with the associated data that was written to the DTF (e.g. U, V, W, P, etc.)

Blanking Option in CFD-VIEW for Visualizing Chimera Grids

CFD-FASTRAN uses closed surfaces, such as walls or blocked regions, to create Chimera holes (or blanked regions) in a grid. By default, the number of buffer layers is set to 1. This means that a closed surface will cut a hole in any mesh that overlaps it, and the initial "blanking" of grid cells defines the hole.

User Defined Curve Probes in CFD-VIEW

CFD-VIEW allows the user to create curve probes from a file containing XYZ data. This feature gives the user flexibility of collecting data on any specified/desired curve in the computational domain. As an example of use, these "curved line" probes could be used to sample simulation data at the same locations that experimental data was collected.