PAVE provides facilities to print plots, export images and animations, and export subsets of data. In cases where PAVE's
built in capabilities do not allow you to capture the images you want
(e.g. saving multiple windows together), the tools xv
and snapshot may allow you to accomplish your goals.
You probably need to set your PRINTER environment variable prior to
launching PAVE for printing to work correctly.
(See the Quick PAVE Jump start section for
further information.)
To print tile plots, if you are printing to a black and white printer,
you should probably choose "Control/Configure" from the plot's menu bar and then
experiment with various settings for the colors. You may want to
reduce the number of colors in the plot by choosing a smaller number
of tiles, or alternatively you may want to choose to use the grayscale
colormap. Once you are ready to print the image, just choose the File..Print
menu item on the tile plot, and it will be printed on the printer specified
by the PRINTER environment variable. If for some reason this
doesn't work, then see the sections below on using snapshot
and/or xv. These tools will enable you to save a screen
captured image to a PostScript file that can then be printed.
To print 3D mesh plots, first decide whether you want to print using
black and white or color PostScript. You can then select either the
"Black & White PostScript" or the "Color PostScript" button on the 3D mesh plot's
"ANIMATING SURFACE" window. Then type in the filename, complete with path
name, in the resulting window. Your PostScript will be saved to the chosen
file, and then you can issue an lpr command from the Unix command line to
print that file.
To print time series line plots or scatter plots,
select the "print" button on the plot's window. Then type in the filename,
complete with path name, in the resulting window. Your PostScript will be
saved to the chosen file, and then you can issue an lpr command from the Unix
command line to print that file.
To print time series bar plots,
see the sections below on using snapshot
and/or xv. These tools will enable you to save an screen
captured image to a PostScript file that can then be printed.
Tile plots can be saved as GIF, Postscript, SGI's RGB, XWD, TIFF,
and several other image file formats using file menu items on the tile
plot.
Tile plots can be saved to an MPEG animation using the
File..Save MPEG Animation menu item on the tile plot.
Several points to note regarding MPEG animations:
- They can take a while to generate.
- They use up a fair amount of disk space, typically 0.4MB per frame
to generate, and 0.2-0.4 MB for the MPEG file for each 24 hours of
animation. This varies
proportionally with the size of the image you are animating. It also
varies according to the number of changes in the image during
animation.
- The MPEG animations can be viewed using mpeg_play, which is
distributed with PAVE as
<pave installation dir> /$EDSS_ENV/bin/OPTIMIZE/public_domain/mpeg_play. Use "mpeg_play -help" for a description of its options.
Here is a useful example:
mpeg_play test.mpeg -loop -framerate 5 -quiet
"-loop" keeps it looping.
"-quiet" keeps it from printing to stdout (which makes the transition from the
last frame to the first much faster).
"-framerate 5" slows it down to print 5 frames per second.
Tile plots can be saved to an animated GIF using the
File..Save Animated GIF menu item on the tile plot.
Several points to note regarding animated GIFs:
- The animated GIF is created by PAVE using an x window dump
- each of the timesteps in the tile plot is then converted to a gif image.
- While the animaged GIF is being created by PAVE, the user must not bring up other windows.
If other windows cover the tile plot while the x window dumps are being performed,
then the animated gif will incorrectly include the contents of these windows rather than
the tile plot window.
- After the x window dumps are completed, a program called convert
creates the animated gif. If there are many timesteps in the dataset, there will be a
delay before the user is again given control of the pave gui. After the convert
program has finished running, control of the PAVE GUI will return to the user.
- The animated GIFs can be viewed using a web browser.
To print other types of PAVE plots,
see the sections below on using snapshot
and/or xv. These tools will enable you to save an screen
captured image to an image file that can then be printed.
PAVE's Export menu enables you to save the currently selected formula's
data in AVS5 field format, netCDF Models-3 IO/API format,
and as tabbed ASCII data suitable for use in spreadsheet
applications. (Note that the currently selected formula's data
is saved when using the export menu items.)
Of particular interest may be the option to export netCDF
data. You might find a very large dataset cumbersome to keep around when
you are only interested in a small number of variables, perhaps in a
small time range or spatial region. PAVE can be used to subselect the
variable, time, levels and region of interest and then save this
data to a smaller, more manageable dataset. Also, you can save the result
of a complex formula to a netCDF file and therefore prevent having to wait
for it to compute again.
On an SGI, type snapshot. To view the snapshot menu, place the
mouse pointer over snapshot and press the right mouse button. Choose the
New file name option to name the file that will be output from
snapshot. You should give it a name with a ".rgb" extension. While the
mouse pointer is over snapshot, press and hold down the shift key. Then
move the mouse pointer to the top left corner of the part of the screen
you wish to capture. Then press the left mouse button and drag the mouse
pointer until you reach the bottom right corner of the section you want
to capture. You should see a red box surrounding the part of the screen
that will be captured. If you need to modify the size or location of the
box, place the mouse pointer over snapshot and press and hold down the
shift button. To move the box, place the mouse pointer inside the box and
then drag the box using the middle mouse button. To resize the box, place
the mouse pointer near one of the edges of the box and drag the edge (or
corner) using the left mouse button.
Once you have selected the portion of the screen to be captured, use
the Save as ... option on the snapshot menu to create an RGB file.
To convert the RGB file to black and white PostScript, type
tops your_file.rgb > your_file.ps
If you want a color PostScript file, type
tops your_file.rgb -rgb > your_file.ps
You can then use xpsview your_file.ps to view the new PostScript
file. You can then capture another image by placing the mouse
pointer over snapshot, pressing and holding the shift button, and
then creating a new box with your left mouse button.
For more information on snapshot and tops, see their man pages.
Sun also has a version of snapshot that can capture images. The images
can be loaded and viewed with imagetool and then saved to a variety of
formats, including postscript. Both snapshot and imagetool have nice
user interfaces to help you through the process. See the man pages
for more information.
xv is a very usfule tool for capturing and manipulating
images - especially GIF files. Type xv to start the program. To view
the xv menu, place the mouse pointer over the inital window and press the
right mouse button. Click on the grab button with the left mouse button,
then use the middle button to drag over the screen region you wish to
save to a PostScript file. A copy of these pixels will appear in a
separate window.
Now left-click the "xv controls"'s Save button.
Choose PostScript from the "Format" menu, and "Full Color" or
your preferred color choice from the "Colors" Menu. Next use
the browser to save the PostScript to a file. It is recommended
that you give the file a .ps extension, to indicate its format.
You can then use xpsview your_file.ps to view the new PostScript
file.
xv is available for a variety of UNIX Platforms via anonymous
ftp to ftp://www.trilon.com/pub/xv
For more information on xv, see the WWW page at
http://www.trilon.com/xv
NOTE: xv is a shareware program that you will need to pay $25 to
license if you decide to use it. This can be remitted to
US Mail: John Bradley
1053 Floyd Terrace
Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
FAX: (610) 520-2042
Electronic Mail regarding XV should be sent to one of these three addresses:
xv@trilon.com - general XV questions
xvbiz@trilon.com - XV licensing & pricing questions
xvtech@trilon.com - bug reports, technical questions
Next Chapter: Driving PAVE using scripts
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