Setting the active window

VisIt has the concept of an active window that is the window to which new plots are added. You can change the active window by selecting a window number from theActive windowmenu located in the center of theMain Window. Setting the active window updates the GUI so that it displays the state for the new active window. TheActive windowmenu is shown in Figure 6-4. You can also set the active window using the

146 Managing vis windows

Active window submenu in theMain Window’s Windows menu or you can click on theActive window icon in the vis window’sToolbar.

2.5.1 Copying window attributes

VisIt allows you to copy window attributes and plots from one window to another when you have more than one window. This can be useful when you are comparing plots generated from similar databases. TheCopymenu, shown in Figure 6-5, contains options to copy the view, lighting, annotations, plots, or everything from other from other vis windows. Under each option, theCopy menu provides a list of available vis windows from which attributes can be copied so, for example, if you have two windows and you want to copy the view from vis window 1 into vis window 2, you can select theWindow 2option from theView fromsubmenu. The list of available windows depends on the vis windows that you have created. You can copy the lighting from one window to another window by using theLighting fromsubmenu or you can use theAnnotations fromor

Plots from to copy the annotations or plots, respectively. If you make a selection from theEverything from submenu, all attributes and plots are copied into the active vis window.

Figure 6-4: Active window menu

Active window menu

Managing vis windows 147

2.5.2 Locking vis windows together

When you use VisIt to do side by side comparisons of databases, you may find is useful to lock vis windows together. Vis windows can be locked together in time so that when you change the active database timestep in one database, as when viewing an animation, all vis windows that are locked in time switch to the same database timestep. You can lock vis windows together in time by selecting theTime option from theLock menu (see Figure 6-6) in theMain Window’s Windows menu. Any number of windows can be locked together in time and you can turn off time locking at any time.

You can also lock interactive tools together so that updating a tool in one window updates the tool in other windows that have enabled tool locking. This can be useful when you have sliced a database using the plane tool in more than one window and you want to be able to change the slice using plane tool in either window and have it affect the other vis windows. You can enable tool locking by selecting theTools option from theLock

menu.

In addition to locking vis windows in time, or locking their tools together, you can also lock vis windows’ views together so that when you change the view in one vis window, other vis windows get the same view. When you change the view in a vis window that has view locking enabled, the view only effects other vis windows that also have view locking enabled and have plots of the same dimension. That is, when you change the view of a vis window that contains 3D plots, it will only have an effect on other locked vis windows if they have 3D plots. Vis windows that contain 2D plots are not affected by changing the view of a vis window containing 3D plots and vice-versa. When you enable view locking, the vis window snaps to the view used by other vis windows with locked views or it stays the same if no other vis windows have locked views. To enable view locking, select the

View option from theLock menu or click on theLock view icon in the vis window’s

Toolbar.

148 Using vis windows

3.0

Using vis windows

The first thing to know about using a vis window is how to change window modes. A window mode is a state in which the vis window behaves in a specialized manner. There are four window modes: Navigate, Zoom, Lineout, and Pick. Vis windows are in navigate mode by default. This means that most mouse actions are used to move, rotate, or zoom-in on the plots that the vis window displays. Each vis window has aPopup menu that can be activated by clicking the right mouse button while the mouse is inside of the vis window. The Popup menu contains options that can put the vis window into other modes and perform other common operations. To put the vis window into another window mode, open thePopup menu, selectMode and then select one of the four window modes. You can also change the window mode using the vis window’sToolbar, which has buttons to set the window mode. You can find out more about thePopup menu and

Toolbar later in this chapter.