ESTEL:Configure Tecplot for ESTEL-3D

We decided a while ago to standardise on binary Tecplot output for ESTEL-3D. Tecplot is a very nice visualisation tool and works rather well for 3D data. Our results files tend to be large and supporting a binary format made sense to reduce file size. Conveniently, tecplot provide a library that called be accessed by Fortran routines to export directly in Tecplot format. Importantly, this library can be distributed with a commercial software such as ESTEL-3D (see below).

This page summarise the set-up required to get binary Tecplot output working with ESTEL-3D on your machine.

= Preparation of the Tecplot tree = Tecplot provides the library tecio.a (on 32-bits machines) and tecio64.a (on 64-bits machines). The version of the library depends on the version of Tecplot. Instead of using Tecplot's fancy version numbers, we version the libraries as:


 * tecplot_10.a -> provided by Tecplot 10 release 6
 * tecplot_110.a -> provided by tecplot 360
 * tecplot_111.a -> provided by tecplot 360 release 2

The relevant Tecplot library has to be copied and renamed to a tecplot/ folder organised in a similar way to that of the other modules of the TELEMAC system except that there are no sources. So if the root of the TELEMAC systel is systel90, you should have one of the following.

systel90 -> tecplot -> tecplot_10 -> library_version -> tecplot10.a systel90 -> tecplot -> tecplot_110 -> library_version -> tecplot110.a systel90 -> tecplot -> tecplot_111 -> library_version -> tecplot111.a

For ESTEL-3D v5p6, only tecplot10.a is supported. All versions are supported in ESTEL-3D v5p7. In any case, it is possible to have all these Tecplot libraries installed in parallel and to choose a specific one at compile time.

= ESTEL-3D v5p6 =

Dictionnary
= ESTEL-3D v5p7 =

= Limitation of Tecplot =

No backward compatibility!
Despite some claims to it, the Tecplot libraries are not backward compatible: if you compile ESTEL-3D to use tecplot111.a (the library in Tecplot360r2), the resulting binary files will not be readable by Tecplot10r6 or Tecplot360r1. This is a very clear limitation as it means that you cannot exchange files with people using older versions of Tecplot.

Future access to data
Relying on Tecplot's internal format is potentially dangerous. We have no real assurance that we will still be able to read this format in 10 years time for instance. Therefore, it is advised to backup important data using the ASCII output option. The datafiles will be larger but will but at least human readable.

= Getting the Tecplot library = The Tecplot library can be found in the lib/ folder of the Tecplot installation root. It will be called tecio.a for a 32-bits machine and tecio64.a for a 64-bits machine. Recently, Tecplot Inc created a specific TecIO page on the website: http://www.tecplottalk.com/tecio.

Just to make sure we could find them all the time, we backed up some of the files. Choose the i386 link for a 32-bits machine and x86_64 link for a 64-bit machine. Note that only Linux binaries are listed so far. The src link gives you access to the sources. The "pdf" link is the relevant section of the Tecplot documentation describing the library:
 * tecplot111.a (Tecplot 360r2): i386, x86_64, src, pdf
 * tecplot110.a (Tecplot 360r1): i386, x86_64, src, pdf
 * tecplot10.a (Tecplot 10r6): i386, x86_64, src, pdf

= Redistribution of the Tecplot TecIO library = Redistribution of the Tecplot library within the TELEMAC system is allowed. The Tecplot license (at least for Tecplot 10r6, 360 and 360r2) states:

Utilities/Other Executables. Licensee is permitted to redistribute the included FRAMER executable to others provided that Licensee does not charge a fee for such distribution and the distribution is solely for the purpose of displaying movie files generated by Software. Licensee is permitted to redistribute the included TECIO libraries and the PREPLOT executable for the sole purpose of generating binary files compatible with the Software.

This has also been cleared with Jim Carson, (Tecplot Inc.'s Technical Product Manager): http://www.tecplottalk.com/viewtopic.php?t=62