CFD Online Logo CFD Online URL
www.cfd-online.com
[Sponsors]
Home > Forums > Visualization & Post-Processing Software > ParaView

[General] Reading Fluent gzip-compressed files to ParaView

Register Blogs Community New Posts Updated Threads Search

Reply
 
LinkBack Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Old   May 16, 2014, 11:13
Default Reading Fluent gzip-compressed files to ParaView
  #1
New Member
 
Lars Schwarzer
Join Date: Apr 2013
Posts: 8
Rep Power: 13
larsschwarzer is on a distinguished road
Hello everyone,
I've recently started working with ParaView to post-process my Ansys Fluent calculations. As my overall memory space is limited, I want to save my result files in compressed form (i.e., cas.gz and dat.gz). I have tried to read these into ParaView, but ParaView fails to find the corresponding data-file of the pair and ultimately crashes. A short example: There are two files named

my_file_name.cas.gz
my_file_name.dat.gz

I can select 'my_file_name.cas.gz' through the ParaView GUI, and it will recognize the file to be a Fluent file (appropriate reader is selected). ParaView will then go busy for several minutes and finally crash. In serial mode, there is no error message. I have tried parallel mode as well, which at least gives me an obscure message somewhere along the lines that there is no .dat-file.

Is there any way to force ParaView to invoke gunzip when reading the files? It works fine with the uncompressed files ('my_file_name.cas' and 'my_file_name.dat'), which I do not want to save permanently, though (disk space!).

The whole idea is to 'streamline' my workflow and not have to maintain a compressed and uncompressed file side by side, or have to manually unzip the file, e.g. by Fluent, post-process and then delete the file again. (I'm doing case studies and frequently have to re-evaluate older solutions in the light of new results)

I've checked this Forum, the greater Internet and the manual to no success. Any help on solutions (or workarounds) is appreciated.

Thanks and enjoy your weekend,
Lars

(Program versions: ParaView 4.1.0, Fluent 14.5.7)
larsschwarzer is offline   Reply With Quote

Old   May 16, 2014, 17:20
Default
  #2
Retired Super Moderator
 
Bruno Santos
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Posts: 10,981
Blog Entries: 45
Rep Power: 128
wyldckat is a name known to allwyldckat is a name known to allwyldckat is a name known to allwyldckat is a name known to allwyldckat is a name known to allwyldckat is a name known to all
Greetings Lars and welcome to the forum!

Knowing which Operating System you're using would help, as ways to get around these kinds of issues can depend on the OS you're using.

For example, on Linux:
  • You could use a shell script (Bash or even Python) for unpacking the files to a temporary work folder, open them in ParaView and when ParaView closes, the script would delete the temporary folder.
  • You could use a specific FUSE module for opening files on the fly, as if they were uncompressed.
On Windows:
  • You could use a batch file or a Powershell script, to do the same as it was done in Linux with a shell script.
  • There might still be a solution similar to a FUSE module for Windows, where ZIP files are accessed on-the-fly as if they were USB drives.


If you need a more OS-agnostic way of doing this, for example, directly in ParaView, then it might get a bit tricky. This is because ParaView does not support uncompressing on-the-fly, unless the file format itself has an internal compression option. The way to try and do this would be to use a "Programmable Source" (see the "Sources" menu), coded in Python. This would essentially unzip the file, open with the dedicated reader and then erase the temporary file once the data was read into RAM. The complexity increases if you have transient data spread across several files...


Therefore, the remaining question is: which solution do you want to go with?

Best regards,
Bruno
wyldckat is offline   Reply With Quote

Old   May 19, 2014, 13:28
Default
  #3
New Member
 
Lars Schwarzer
Join Date: Apr 2013
Posts: 8
Rep Power: 13
larsschwarzer is on a distinguished road
Hi Bruno,
thanks for answering! I'm using a Windows desktop/work station for post-processing. For now, it's all steady-state data.

The on-the-fly solutions sound neat, although the idea with a batch or script file might also do the trick. All I am trying to do is to avoid having to sit in front of my computer, press a few buttons, wait, press some other buttons, wait again, etc., etc.

If I get around to try some of your ideas this week, I'll post the results here.

Thanks,
Lars
larsschwarzer is offline   Reply With Quote

Old   August 4, 2014, 23:55
Default
  #4
New Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2012
Posts: 23
Rep Power: 14
cfdan is on a distinguished road
  1. extract both .gz files
  2. rename them into my_file_name.cas and my_file_name.dat
  3. open my_file_name.cas as fluent case file
cfdan is offline   Reply With Quote

Old   August 8, 2014, 05:12
Default
  #5
New Member
 
Lars Schwarzer
Join Date: Apr 2013
Posts: 8
Rep Power: 13
larsschwarzer is on a distinguished road
Hi cfdan,
thanks for your suggestion. That's more or less what I was doing before, but I was trying to avoid keeping the compressed and uncompressed files or creating a new uncompressed file every time I want to return to post-processing.

Recently, my supervisor made me drop the issue because other problems were more urgent. I'll try to get back to the topic, though, whenever I can spare a few minutes.
larsschwarzer is offline   Reply With Quote

Reply

Tags
compressed, fluent, gzip, paraview


Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are Off
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
[General] Error while reading VTK files in Paraview d_ray ParaView 12 January 24, 2018 09:00
Problem in running ICEM grid in Openfoam Tarak OpenFOAM 6 September 9, 2011 18:51
Recovering Fluent surfaces in ParaView alemenchaca FLUENT 6 August 11, 2011 16:52
OpenFOAM15 paraFoam bug koen OpenFOAM Bugs 19 June 30, 2009 11:46
Reading mesh files into Fluent from Gambit Prabhu.B FLUENT 4 July 16, 2002 20:03


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 16:30.