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What’s New in Tecplot 360 2021 Release 2


Take a tour of Tecplot 360 2021 R2 with Product Manager, Scott Fowler, and his team.

Tecplot 360 2021 R2

Learn more about Tecplot 360

Agenda:

  • 03:36 – Overview of what’s new in Tecplot 360 2021 R2
  • 04:50 – Improved performance and resource management
  • 07:05 – Expanded support for transient data
  • 14:30 – Transient data zone visibility is now configurable
  • 22:17 – User Interface (GUI) creature comforts
  • 25:09 – Loader and library changes
  • 26:11 – Platform support changes
  • 29:04 – What’s coming in 2022
  • 32:37 – Q&A

For all changes in Tecplot 360, see the release notes.

Q&A from the Webinar

Is it possible to use multiple CPUs or GPUs to speed up post processing?

Tecplot 360 is a shared memory application that uses OpenGL for rendering, which will use your graphics card. That means when you are post-processing, all the CPU cores available on a single machine will be used. We don’t do distributed memory parallel processing.

If you have transient data with one file per time step, you can distribute that work among multiple machines. On an HPC, you could submit a batch job where each node on your HPC would load one time step of your data and generate an image. So, you can get parallel processing done on an HPC.

You can also do it on a single machine using multiple instances of Tecplot 360. But you have to be careful because you may run into resource contention if you have multiple instances running at the same time on the same machine.

In Tecplot 360, when you’re working with isosurfaces, slices, or streamtraces, those are fully parallelized and will use all your CPU cores.

You can use PyTecplot and the Python multiprocessing library to launch multiple instances of Tecplot 360 simultaneously to improve the speed of post processing. Here’s a webinar to show you how, Analyze Your Time-Dependent Data 6 Times Faster. There is no load balancing so you have to be careful with the resources available on your machine.

Is this release (Tecplot 360 2021 R2) supported on the Mac M1 chips or Mac OS M1 version?

Tecplot 360 will run on Macs with the M1 chip, but it’s going to run in compatibility mode. We haven’t done any performance testing to see if there’s a degraded performance running in that mode, so your mileage may vary there. We are looking into native support for Mac M1. The GUI (graphical user interface) library we use, QT, recently came out with native M1 support.  This will be an active area of research for us in the next few months.

Are there any changes to PyTecplot? Is it compatible with Homebrew?

Yes, there are a few API changes to PyTecplot. PyTecplot 1.4.2 has been uploaded to the PyPI servers.The changes parallel some of the new capabilities in Tecplot 360:

  • Transient zone visibility
  • Updates to the AVI contour legend header and the time clustering options
  • Minor documentation changes

Is it compatible with Homebrew? We have made no attempt to intentionally make it compatible with Homebrew in this release.

Can I Use LaTeX with the Contour Legend?

Unfortunately, the answer is no, we don’t support LaTeX in the contour legend. But this update to use custom text is a steppingstone to supporting of LaTeX in the contour legend – so it is on our roadmap! We’ve also talked about LaTeX support in the axes titles. You can look forward to that in the next couple of releases.

By the way, support for LaTeX is one of our most requested items! It’s fun to see how many people are passionate about using LaTeX.

To get notified of upcoming releases and webinars, subscribe to Tecplot!

Who do I contact if I have more questions?

For technical support contacts in your area, visit our support page.

 

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