[Paraview] ANN: ParaView 3.98.0 is available for download

[Sebastien Jourdain]

*Folks,

ParaView 3.98.0 is now available for download
(http://paraview.org/paraview/resources/software.php). This is slated to be
the
final major release in the 3 series, hence the dramatic change in version
number since the last release
(3.14.1). If needed, we will have patch release(s) before the 4.0 release.
These release notes give a summary of the major changes in this release,
which address more than 300 issues (
http://paraview.org/Bug/changelog_page.php).

Exporting to PS/PDF: One of the most requested features on ParaView User
Voice (http://paraview.uservoice.com) was to add support for vector
graphics. With this release, it is now possible to export scenes from 3D
views and charts as postscript, eps, pdf, or svg vector graphics. All text
and annotations such as scalar bars, cube-axes, and curves in charts are
exported as vector graphics, thus ensuring crisp reproduction for
publications. 3D surfaces and volumes, however, must remain embedded as a
rasterized image in the resulting output file.

Math-text in annotations: The second most requested feature on ParaView
User Voice (http://paraview.uservoice.com) was the ability to add
mathematical markup to annotation text. ParaView can now use the equation
rendering support in the matplotlib package to generate mathematical
equations in selected text fields. Only categorical scalar bar annotations
support this feature at the moment, but future releases will extend this
capability to all text fields.

Transparent surfaces: Another highly requested feature was the ability to
specify the opacity mapping when coloring surfaces with scalars, which is
added in ParaView 3.98.0. The 'Color Scale Editor' dialog adds the ability
to specify the opacity functions for surfaces.

Redesigned 'Properties' panels: With the 3.98.0 version, we have revamped
the panels used to specify filter properties and display parameters.
Instead of using separate panels, we now have a combined 'Properties' panel
that by default shows a subset of commonly used properties for filters. For
more control, users can easily switch to an advanced view. The updated
panel also adds the ability to search for properties by name.

Improved AMR support: AMR (adaptive mesh refinement) data structures were
completely redesigned for improved performance and memory efficiency.  It
is now possible to volume render AMR datasets. Additionally, we have added
support for multi-resolution streaming of AMR datasets for adaptive volume
rendering.

Simplified 'Find Data': The 'Find Data' dialog, used for querying datasets,
has been simplified with the ability to specify complex queries for
advanced users. Commonly used operations such as min, max, and mean are now
accessible from the simplified interface.

New slice-based views: Two new views have been added to simplify data
exploration using orthogonal slices: Slice and Quad view. The Slice view
allows the user to quickly create, delete, and move any arbitrary slice
along a given axis using an interactive user interface. The Quad view
enables the user to explore a dataset using three slices that get
independently rendered in their own 2D view while a 3D view lets the user
see slices’ positions in 3D space.

Modularization of VTK/ParaView: In the past few months, VTK was
restructured to use a modularized approach for building various components
of the toolkit. ParaView's build infrastructure was revamped to make use of
this. It is now possible to build variants of the ParaView library while
picking and choosing
modules from VTK that are of interest, while removing those that are not.
Thus developers are able to build small, lightweight VTK and ParaView
packages ideal for co-processing.

Improved co-processing: Catalyst (http://catalyst.kitware.com) leverages
the VTK and ParaView modularization by allowing users to simplify which
parts of VTK and ParaView to link simulation codes to for in
situprocessing. Note that Catalyst should be considered beta
functionality. In
addition, the co-processing library was modified to add in extra Python
methods that give a cleaner look to the GUI generated scripts. Due to
changes in ParaView though, scripts created with ParaView 3.14.1 that
generate screenshots will not work with ParaView 3.98. ParaView 3.14.1
generated co-processing scripts that only output extracts (i.e. data files)
should work fine with ParaView 3.98.

This version of ParaView includes an experimental interface to GPGPU
processing in Los Alamos National Lab's PISTON (
http://viz.lanl.gov/projects/PISTON.html) library. The interface takes the
form of a plugin (which must be compiled from source) that exposes Piston's
on-GPU implementations of the slice, threshold and iso-contour algorithms
while minimizing transfers between the CPU and GPU.

Every release of ParaView includes several excellent contributions from the
community, and this release is no different. The 3.98.0 release includes a
completely redesigned 'Memory Inspector' panel that can be used to keep
track of memory usage across all ParaView processes, including remote
processes (thanks to Burlen Loring at Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory). Moreover, a new ParaView reader plugin for LANL's GMV file
format has been added (thanks to Sven Buijssen at TU Dortmund University)
that supports a wider set of keywords than the current one from VisItBridge.

As always, we look forward to your feedback (paraview.uservoice.com).

- ParaView Team*
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