A streamtrace is the path traced by a massless particle placed at an arbitrary location in a steady-state vector field. Streamtraces may be used to illustrate the nature of the vector field flow in a particular region of the plot. See Section 21 - 9 “Calculating Particle Paths and Streaklines” for information on adding streaklines and particle paths to your plot.
Because streamtraces are dependent upon a vector field, you must define vector components before creating streamtraces in Tecplot 360 EX. However, it is not necessary to activate the Vector zone layer to use streamtraces.
To add streamtraces to your plot, toggle-on "Show Streamtraces" in the Streamtrace Details dialog or in the Plot sidebar and use either the Add Streamtrace tool 
in the toolbar or the Plot sidebar, or the Create Streams button on the Position page of the Streamtrace Details dialog, to specify the location of your streamtraces.
When working with the Add Streamtrace tool, click to individual streamtraces, or drag to seed a rake (group) of streamtraces.
To create streamtraces with a format other than Surface Line, select a format from the "Create Streamtraces with Format" drop-down menu on the Position page of the Streamtrace Details dialog.
If you are drawing a rake on concave 3D volume surfaces using the Add Streamtrace tool, hold down the Shift key to draw the rake outside of the data.
There are two main categories of streamtraces:
• Surface line streamtraces (or streamlines) - Surface streamtraces are confined to the surface on which they are placed. They can be placed in zones displayed as a 2D or 3D surface, or on a displayed boundary of a 3D zone, such as the K=1 face of an IJK-ordered zone. If you try to place surface streamtraces in the interior of a zone displayed as a 3D volume, an error message appears, and no streamtraces are drawn. See Section 15 - 1.2 “Lines Page”. When surface streamtraces are placed on a no-slip boundary surface, they will propagate according to the flow field very near the surface (see Section 15 - 2 “Surface Streamtraces on No-slip Boundaries” for more information).
• Volume streamtraces - Volume streamtraces can be created in 3D volume zones only (IJK-ordered or FE-volume zones). See Section 15 - 1.3 “Rod/Ribbon Page”. Volume streamtraces are subdivided into three categories:
• Volume Lines, or volume streamlines.
• Volume Ribbons, or streamribbons.
• Volume Rods, or streamrods.
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If you have added streamtraces to your plot, but cannot see them, go to the Volume page of the