Tecplot Knowledgebase

AVI files saved on Mac OS X 10.8.2 do not play in QuickTime.

jwerkautecplotcom — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 15:13:16 +0000

Problem:

AVI files saved on Mac OS X 10.8.2 do not play in QuickTime.

Solution:

When saving an AVI file on a Mac the produced file will prove incompatible with QuickTime X. It has been found that QuickTime X does not support many codecs that previous versions used too. Thus the solution is to use another player. The article below is relevant to this issue and will discuss in greater detail this problem.

http://www.iskysoft.com/topic-snow-leopard/how-to-play-avi-with-quicktime-on-mac.html

AVI files have been found to work properly on Mac OS X 10.6.8. Furthermore on Mac OS X 10.7.5 it has been found that using the non-compressed option will not work whereas using the line preserving method does work properly. Also to note is that these same files that do not work in Mac OS X do in fact play on Windows.

Tecplot RS 2012 R3 – Support for Multiple RS Variables Files

straton — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 22:23:31 +0000

New to Tecplot RS version 2012 R3: RS variables simulator files added for: CHEARS, CMG, Eclipse/SLB, Sensor, and VIP/Nexus.

It is no longer necessary to manually copy and name rsvariables.txt files to use them with Tecplot RS. The RS Variables files include variable renaming and aliasing rules along with certain plot styles.

The first time you run Tecplot RS, you’ll be asked to choose a configuration file corresponding to the simulator you use. You can switch to a different file — without restarting Tecplot RS — via the Change button in the Variables tab of the Plot Options dialog:

Options > Plot Options > Variables tab > Change button in RS Variables section (in the lower-right part of the dialog)

You can switch to a different file with a macro call. This is useful if you work with multiple simulators.

For those of you who are used to using RS Variables files in the manual way, you won’t see any change. You may still use your own rsvariables.txt file. Your own RS Variables will show up on the RS Variables dialog as “User Defined”.

Tecplot 360 does not finish opening on Mac OS X10.5.7, OS X 10.8.2, after security updates are applied

jwerkautecplotcom — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 18:51:38 +0000

Problem:

When opening Tecplot 360, the initial Tecplot window appears, however Tecplot appears to “hang/freeze” on a grey screen.

Solution:

Apple is no longer supporting X11 (Apple’s version of the X server). Thus when you start Tecplot the application seems to freeze on a grey screen. In order to solve this issue we have found a couple of solutions.

1-The first solution to this problem is to run Tecplot in –mesa mode via a Terminal window. This will of course exclude the use of your graphics card.

2-The second option is to download the latest version of XQuartz (2.7.4). Once this is done you will need to either remove X11 from your system or set XQuartz as the default application (this is asked during install). Once the install is complete you will most likely need to restart your computer or log out and log back in before the changes take effect.

Apple has recently posted on their support page some more information on the reason for the change.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5293

The latest version of XQuartz can be found here:

http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/

new Help Search introduced in Tecplot RS version 2012 R2 does not work in Internet Explorer version 8

straton — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 00:59:30 +0000

The new Help Search feature, introduced in Tecplot RS version 2012 R2, does not work in Internet Explorer version 8 or earlier. The new Help Search does work in Internet Explorer version 9.

All other Help features, in Internet Explorer versions before version 9, work fine. All other Help features also work fine in most other modern browsers (e.g., Firefox, Opera, Safari). The sole exception is Google Chrome, which has security policies that prevent the scripts from working properly.

Enabling usage logging in RLM

Margaret — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 19:00:25 +0000

If you have a network license for a Tecplot product, usage data can be logged using the report log capability in Reprise License Manager (RLM). To set up usage logging, do the following:

Open the RLM browser-based administration tool through http://localhost:5054/, where localhost represents the license server hostname and 5054 represents the web server port number.
Click on the Status button and then the teclmd button under the Options heading.
Add the following line to the ISV options field:
REPORTLOG +./report.log

Where report.log is the file name and the plus (+) symbol indicates that data will be appended to any existing file. By default, the file will be placed in the same directory as the RLM installation, but you can alternately replace the ./ with the full path to the desired file.
When you are satisfied with the file path, click Update Options
To initialize logging, click the Reread/Restart Servers button and click REREAD/RESTART

After the preceding steps have been completed, RLM will log future usage of Tecplot products.

Translucency when using Ubuntu Unity

Margaret — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 19:00:49 +0000

Your Tecplot Linux Ubuntu Unity user interface workspace (e.g., Ubuntu version 12.04) may exhibit translucency, that is, all the open application screens remain visible underneath Tecplot. To disable this translucency you may instruct Linux xlib to manage the colors natively as RGB.

Do this by setting the environment variable in a command line, or in any .bashrc or .profile file:

export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1

Tecplot 360, Focus, and RS crash on MAC OSX Lion when exporting an image

Margaret — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 19:00:29 +0000

Problem:

I tried to export an image when running Tecplot software (360, Focus, or RS) on MAC OSX Lion, and Tecplot crashed. How can I prevent the crash?

Solution:

This is caused by a bug in XQuartz 2.6, which comes with MAC OSX Lion. It happens with Tecplot 360, Focus, and RS.

If you run the OSX Lion automatic updates, XQuartz will update to the latest edition of XQuartz 2.6, which does not contain the fix. In order to fix this you will need to update to XQuartz 2.7, which does contain the fix.

If you are unable to update to XQuartz 2.7 then you can prevent the crash by doing one of the following:

1) Run Tecplot in -mesa mode. You can do this at the command line by adding the ‘-mesa’ flag to the command you normally use to run Tecplot, or by selecting “Software OpenGL Emulation” within the Preferences dialog which should appear when you first run Tecplot on your MAC.

2) You can also run Tecplot and go to the Performance dialog (Options/Performance in Tecplot 360 and Focus, and Options/Performance Options in Tecplot RS) and under the “Rendering” tab set the Image Export Options to “Fast” instead of “Safe”.

Then you will be able to export your images, but then you can’t set the image size, so you would be limited to the size of the image on the screen.

Appending to Reprise’s debug.log file

chris — Thu, 31 May 2012 22:01:04 +0000

Problem:

I would like to be able to append to the debug.log file created by Reprise instead of having to overwrite it. I am using RLM V7 and and tried the following commands:

./rlm -c tecplotlm.lic -dlog +./debug.log &

./rlm -c tecplotlm.lic -dlog +debug.log &

However, after each shutdown and startup, the debug.log file would only contain
information since the last startup. How can I accomplish this?

Solution:

The append functionality was not workign in RLM 7 but this was fixed in RLM 8. If you have RLM 7 you can workaround this byu using the shell to append stdout to the log file, like this:

rlm -c tecplotlm.lic >> debug.log &

Limit on line length in RLM options file

chris — Thu, 31 May 2012 22:01:03 +0000

Problem:

I want to use the GROUP command in my RLM Options file to define a group of users. Then I want to use that group in an INCLUDE command to set the access level for those users.

The group in question consists of a large number of users, so the line where that group is defined is very long. When I place that group in the INCLUDE command I find that not all users in the list have their access set correctly.

Is there a limit to the number of characters or number of users in a group in a line in the Options file?

Solution:

Yes. There is a limit of 1024 characters on the length of a GROUP line in the Options file.

How to make a boundary for use with triangulation?

chris — Thu, 31 May 2012 22:01:02 +0000

Question:

On the triangulation dialog there is a Use Boundary Zone(s) checkbox which allows you to pick a zone to use as a boundary. This will prevent the triangulation from crossing that boundary. How can you make a zone that will work as a boundary?

Answer:

1) Start by loading your source data.

2) Go to Data > Create Zone > Rectangular and create a zone that encompasses the source data points (should be set to do this by default)

3) Go to Data > Extract > Points from Polyline, left click on the nodes which will make up the desired boundary and hit the ESC key when you are done creating it.

4) Choose to extract the data to a zone

5) Go to Data > Triangulate, click “Use Boundary Zones” and choose your new zone as the boundary zone.

6) Choose the source zone as usual and click Compute.

Alternatively, you could create a more precise boundary outside of Tecplot and load it. Let me know if you have any questions.