NVisF Usage

In order to use the framework, you must add its classes to your classpath. Use one of the following:

Unix c-shell: setenv CLASSPATH /the/full/path/to/NVisF.jar:.
Windows: on Windows machines I use a DOS window to run Java programs. Use
set CLASSPATH="c:\the\full\path\to\NVisF.jar";.
to set the classpath.

Note: the "." at the end of the classpath is necessary. After this, you can run applications with a command line something like
java AppName arg-list
where "AppName.class" is the application to execute, and "arg-list" is a list of command-line arguments to pass to the application. This assumes that AppName.class is in the current directory; if not, you need to add its directory to the CLASSPATH variable as above (use a : as a path separator for Unix, or a ; for Windows).

Java3D applications can use a lot of memory, and some Java installations default to a small maximum memory available. If you run into "Out of memory" errors, try using the "-Xmx" command line option, such as
java -Xmx24m AppName arg-list
This will allocate 24MB of memory for the application.

The easiest way to get acquainted with the framework is to look at the demo applications, described below.

The first demo application visualizes a snapshot from a cosmology simulation performed by Tom Quinn, with a scale comparable to the Virgo cluster. The Tipsy binary file includes ~110,000 paarticles. This application will also work on your own Tipsy binary files. Usage: 'java TipsyViewer ClusterA.bin'

executable class (3kB)       source code (5kB)       Tipsy data file (4.5MB)

The second demo application visualizes a movie of two colliding rubble pile asteriods, a simulation performed by Zoe Leinhardt. The geometry data file contains geometry info for 75 snapshots with 2000 particles each. You need both the geometry data file and the appearance data file (either right-click the links or use the Save-As option to save to disk). These data files are in a private data format, so this application will likely not work on your data files, although it can be easily modified. Usage: 'java RubbleMovie rubbleframes.smv'

executable class (3kB)       source code (3kB)       geometry data file (3.5MB)       appearance data file (<1kB)

The viewer window

After reading in the data file (which can take quite a while, for large files - my Tipsy binary file reader isn't very efficient), a window will appear with the 3D scene above a panel of buttons. There are then several options for manipulating the scene. Click-and-drag with the mouse in the main window will do the following: Button 1 - rotate; Button 2: zoom in (by dragging down) or out (drag up); Button 3: translate the scene without rotation.

Below the view are some unlabelled buttons. I don't know why the labels don't appear - I'm working on it. It's supposed to look like the following figure, and performs the listed functions:

         ____ ____
        |    |    |    U: rotate up
        | U  |null|    D: rotate down
    ____|____|____|    L: rotate left
   |    |    |    |    R: rotate right
   | L  | 0  |  R |    C: rotate clockwise
   |____|____|____|   CC: rotate counter-clockwise
   |    |    |    |    0: undo all rotations
   | C  | D  | CC |   null: undo all rotations, zooms, and translates
   |____|____|____|
The amount of rotation per button click is 22.5", or 1/16 of a full circle.

Many additional features will be added to the viewer in the future; this is simply the first draft.

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This page last updated Jan 5 2001.