DataView Manual/Tutorial

Dataview is pretty easy to handle because most of its functions are very intuitively designed. So now a short Manual/Tutorial:

When you start the program (by simply typing Dataview on the command line) you will see several things in the main window:

The big black thing located central in the Dataview window is the main OpenGL display area, this is where your data will be displayed. Posible actions for this widget are:

• by leftclicking somwhere in the widget the cursor will disappear, by then moving the mouse you can scroll through space (this feature I copyed from the game Homeworld)
• by rightclicking somwhere in the widget the cursor will disappear, by then moving the mouse up and down you can zoom in and out (again Homeworld)
• when you press a you will see a grid appearing in the x-z plane and the cursor will turn into a yellow ball you can move around in this plane I call this the movement mode (mm) (also copied from Homeworld I simply love this game)
  • if you are in mm, hold the shift-key, and move the mouse up or down the yellow cursor will also move up or down, if you let go the shift-key the cursor will again move in a plane parallel to x-z but maintain its y-coordinate
  • ok so now what is this movement mode good for: I tell you if you are in the mm and press a again all scrolling and zooming operations will now take place according to the point you chose
  • if you are in mm and want to leave it without setting a new reference point simply press escape

The menus on top of the window are self explaining, at least I think so. So only the important points.

• File->Print does not do anything for now and
• File->Open opens the File Open Dialog

So now you basically now enaugh for opening and viewing a Data File. Now it comes to the extended features.

On the right hand side of the DataView Window you see a list box: In DataView you can open more than one Datafile at a time, through this listbox you can acces all open Files by simply double left clicking them. if you want to delete one file from the list right click it.

Have you allready asked yourself what the tab bar in top of the display does? With this you can access the options Page:

• the Number of Loaded Points just comes to effect, when you load a data file. DV will then try to load the number of Data points you specified. If the file contains less than the amount you wanted, it will tell you with a short message on the command line
• In the bottom left corner you see the 3D options box the options are
  • enable okt this option does nothing, because currently Dataview includes only 3D viewing
  • Lights On/Off togle the 3D rendering mode should only be used with Show Objects on, because points cannot be rendered correctly this option I included just for the coolness
  • Show Spatial Axes is I think self explanatory, but changing this option just takes effect, when you press the Update Button in the lower right corner
  • Number Of shown Points : you don't have to show all points you've loaded need to press Update
  • Show Objects : you don't wan't to see those boring little points and have a great new Geforce 40000FX super ultra (or likes) then press turn this on and press update and the Data points will be shown by little 3D Pyramids
  • Show Colors : show the "timeline" with colors red = early, green = later need to press Update just takes effect when lights ar Off (I didn't want to play around with textures)
  • the last two edit fields let you change the standard point and line size

OK now we're nearly done, but the coolest effect and some remarks are still to come:

The replay mode (rm): If you activate the rm a buttonbar turnes up by which the replay is controlled

• the green button means play
• ok the red must mean stop
• the slider lets you adjust the replay speed

But first you must set the correct number of points per timestep in the according edit field e.g. in a particle simulation this would be the number of particles you have. (The checkbox delete Traces does currently nothing)

To replay a file you need to have it normally loaded (via open) and marked in the Open Files Listbox. then just press play and enjoy the show.

You can Download 2 example Datafiles from www.weird-birds.org:

LJ32P10kdT02.txt is a simulation of 32 Lennard Jones Particles = this file is a Replay file

PCP10ke024.txt is a Poincare map of a system called the doubly thermostated harmonic oszillator = this file is for static Viewing (= no replay)

A short word about the Datafiles: Dataview is suitable for every kind of csv Data Files, what means, that you can display everithing which consists of every nummer of lines you like, each containing 3 floating point numbers seperated by whatever seperator you want, except numbers (0-9), a comma (.), a minus (-) or the hash mark (#) being reserved for comment lines ( if want to make a comment simply type # at the beginning of the line or type it after the third floating point number in the line). Even (!"§+_=\) would be an apropriate delimiter, as long as the delimiter doesn't change within the file.

So now we're really finished.

If you experience any problems contact THE. Have fun!