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Back to Basics: Tecplot Chorus


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Tecplot Chorus Basics

This video shows you the unique set of features in Tecplot Chorus. You’ll explore datasets from multiple simulations, compare results, and evaluate overall system performance. 

  • Exploring a Cart3D dataset using Tecplot Chorus [4:54] Cart3D Delta Wing Model 
  • Viewing Images [10:49]
  • Identifying Cases of Interest [20:20]
  • Diving Deep into the Simulation Data [24:12]
  • Comparing Grids [28:28]
  • Creating New Images & Variables [30:40]
  • Q&A [42:47]

Read more about the capabilities of Tecplot Chorus. See tutorials in Tecplot Chorus videos. Tecplot Chorus is included with Tecplot 360 for customers with a TecPLUS maintenance agreement.

Q&A from the Webinar

Is there a version of Tecplot Chorus (and Tecplot 360) for academics?

Yes. Please see our Academic Suite.

What is the purpose of Tecplot Chorus? What is it primarily used for?

This tool helps engineers who run and generate many simulations or test data sets. The most common applications are:

  • Optimizing your designs.
  • Developing aero databases.
  • Predicting performance over the operating envelope.
  • Investigation an engineering problem.

In all these scenarios engineers need to manage their solution data, discover the trends and anomalies in output variables, and understand the underlying physics that cause these variations.

How do you easily visualize cell sizes of the grid as a density plot? [43:00]

In Tecplot 360, go to the menu Analyze > Calculate Variables. Click Select and choose the option to calculate the Cell Volume. This will compute the cell area for your 2D cells. The dataset we’re using is a finite-element triangle, therefore we’re going to be computing the cell areas. And because the areas are a cell-based value, we want to choose Cell Center and then Calculate. It takes just a minute to calculate. Let’s go into contour and multi coloring (just double click on the legend to bring up the dialog) and select Cell Volume.

Now the cell area has been calculated, and you can see that we have just a few values. Click add contour level to add a little bit more detail. Now you can see a contour plot of cell sizes or cell areas. If you need a cell volume, you might be able to use an isosurface to find areas of high cell volume, or use value blanking, because then you’re going through a three-dimensional object. You could also use a slice and pass it through there, because that will adopt the cell volume of the source cell.

Is there a way to change the default fonts and sizes or at least is there a way to change for the entire frame and not for each access separately? [45:08]

Let’s go back to a 2D plot because axes are available by default. First, select Frame > Frame Linking. Second, go to the tab Within Frame, and then check the Axis Style checkbox. Now, when you double click on the X axis and change the color to red, you can see that the X and Y change simultaneously. Similarly with labels, change the labels to green and you can see both the X and Y labels are changed.

The defaults can be changed in the Tecplot configuration file, tecplot.cfg located in your installation folder. This file will execute Tecplot macro commands to define the font defaults. More information in the Tecplot 360 User’s Manual Chapter 30-2 Configuration Files.

Note: If you are on a Linux machine and it’s a shared installation, then changing tecplot.cfg file in the Tecplot directory will change it for all users. If your company has a set of defaults that they want everyone to use, that is a great place to make the change. But if you want to make the change only for yourself, you can have a tecplot.cfg file in your home directory on Linux. And in that case, you’re going to want to add a “dot” to the filename: “.tecplot.cfg” – Tecplot 360 will use that as your personal default.

Where do I download Tecplot Chorus? [47:08]

Tecplot Chorus is included in the download of Tecplot 360 for Windows and Linux. There is a toggle in the installation of Tecplot 360 to also install Tecplot Chorus, which is on by default. Tecplot Chorus is not supported on Mac OS.

Are there plans to support Tecplot Chorus on Mac OS? [48:25]

Not yet. Tecplot products use a GUI toolkit called a Qt or “cute”, and we’ve encountered bugs with it on the Mac. We feel the user experience is not yet good enough to release a version on Mac OS. However, with each Qt release, we check to see whether the issues get resolved. We’re still waiting.

Is it possible to load point Cp data, in addition to the line plots forces and moments shown earlier? [50:40]

Let’s look at the plots I produced. I’ll go to Create Images. In this case I ran a macro to create a slice, extract that slice, and plot X versus Cp. You should be able to a create data command to select this and write a macro that creates the Cp curve. And then writes out only the data that you care about.

You could also use a custom action to create the data that you need. In that case, you would then have a new data file object that you could reference in the list.

Can you create images that required the loading of two files or multiple files? For example, if I wanted an image of the surface contours, a PLT file with a slice overlaid using an additional PLT file. [52:50]

This is kind of a tough one with the Tecplot Chorus. If we go back to the CSV file, you see that each tag references a single data file. There is a way, and we have tested this with fluent case and data files. In that case, you need two columns with the same tag name.

Is there a limit to the number of aux files for each solution? [54:40]

I’m assuming this means “Is there a limit for the number of columns for each row that I could have with aux files?”

There is no hard limit, but you may run into performance issues with having very long list.

Note that if I select a bunch of cases and select View Data and hit OK, Tecplot Chorus warns you that you’re about to load more than five data files. Tecplot 360 could get overwhelmed with large data, because of the way that frames are tiled.

Do deltas need to be on the same grid, just like normal Tecplot 360? [56:00]

Yes. All the cases used in the webinar have the same grid. But the XYZ locations don’t have to be in the same locations. Tecplot Chorus will look at how many points I have in each zone. In this example, I have 739,000. Tecplot Chorus will do a straight up subtraction of the Cp variable because that is what is assigned as my contour variable. If instead I happened to have 739,168 points, Tecplot Chorus wouldn’t give you the option. This toggle would be gray because we recognize that the grids are of different dimensions.

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