Quick index

AVS/Express workshops at ETH Zürich
AVS/Express quick tutorial
AVS/Express projects
AVS/Express performance optimization
AVS developer forum
Enhancement to the image_capture module

AVS and AVS/Express resources

Interesting links for Advanced Visual Systems (AVS) products:

Documents/info/projects that use AVS products.
I try to help on the AVS developer forum.
Some of my AVS/Express modules are available to everyone in the IAC Repository.

More specifically, here are helpful pages for AVS/Express users:

AVS/Express Performance Optimization Tips and Tricks. This document can be found also on James' AVS/Express Pearls pages.
AVS/Express readers list.
Sparse ideas from the development and performance enhancement of STM3.
Some of the modules I have developed are not yet in the IAC repository. If you need them just ask:
- CFX Native RES Data Format reader
- Fluent Native Data Format reader
- Matlab MAT files reader
- Vis5D reader (well, this one is available on the IAC).
I tried to help for the VISIT Computational Steering toolkit porting. VISIT uses AVS/Express as its visualization server.
Are you not satisfied by the image_capture movies quality? Here are the instuctions to create high quality MPEG4 movies on Linux.
The Visualization Handbook has been published. Chapter 33 covers AVS/Express and has been written by Jean Favre and myself.

And here are materials from training and tutorials I delivered:

From the CINECA Summer School here is the "AVS/Express End-user Introductory Course" handout. There is also an italian version and is online also the old one.
From the AVS User Meeting 2006 held at ETH Zürich here are the materials from:
- the General Visualization workshop handouts and commented slides.
- the Chemical Visualization handouts.
From the AVS Workshop 2008 held at ETH Zürich:
- the commented slides of the "An introduction to the molecular visualization toolkit STM4" course.
- The handout of the "Advanced visualization with AVS/Express" course.

Some AVS/Express projects

on which I worked in the past

STM4 molecular visualization toolkit.

Highlights:

Library of components plus two new data types
Benefits from module architecture
Decoupling of AVS/Express interface from code through an interface library

MOD3D – Tool for 3D reconstruction of undersea biological structures starting from a movie. This work has been done for ENEA CRAM (Marine Environment Research Center) that has published a paper on it.

Highlights:

Almost all was custom code
GUI capabilities were critical (Data Viewer not used)
Few visualization technique used
Added modules for zooming, marking and navigation

Distributed CFD data access for FERRARI Racing team aerodynamic simulations.

Highlights:

Standard visualization techniques + some data cut/optimization modules added
Fluent reader added to AVS/Express
Big data sets
Performance were critical
The prototype benefited by quick prototyping capabilities offered by AVS/Express (unfortunately the project stopped at the prototype phase…)

ELASIS immersive CFD visualization. ELASIS is part of the Fiat Group and supports the design of car interiors and apparatus.

Here is one of the view of the prototype. It displays the immersive menu and one of the visualizations. It has been developed with AVS/Express Multi Pipe Edition.

Highlights:

Standard CFD techniques
Input already in AVS UCD format
Use immersive Multi Pipe Edition (with wand and head tracker)
3D widgets usable also from standard screen

	Created the Fluent Native Format reader for AVS/Express.
	This module, together with research on huge data access and visualization, formed the basis for the FERRARI Racing team prototype.

Experimental and simulated data management and visualization for a Pelton turbine study. This work has been done in collaboration with Profs. Avellan, Kueny and Farhat (Laboratory for Hydraulic Machines, EPF-Lausanne) and Etienne Parkinson (VA TECH Hydro SA). Two papers has been published on this work: one in 2004 and one in 2006 on fluidodynamics and one in 2005 on data management.

Highlights:

Added CFX reader
Added specialized visualization techniques
Added modules to overcome AVS/Express annoyances (like extents on select cell set)
Used a lot of validation modules (like computing integrals and surface areas)
In depth study of colormaps that helps perception of fine details
AVS/Express was mostly a prototyping environment

Created the CFX RES Native Format reader for AVS/Express. It is used by the Pelton project.

Highlights:

A library from CFX simplified the implementation.
A library from CFX introduced a lot of bugs outside our control.