Exploring Your Results

Right-clicking any case in any plot or view displays a context menu for quick access to frequently-needed tools. These vary slightly by type of view, but may include:

The Filters panel lets you determine which cases are shown in plots or in a matrix by excluding or including cases in which specified variables have particular values or fall within a certain range. Filters apply globally to all Tecplot Chorus views (there are not separate filters for each window). Changes are applied immediately to all open views.

If the Filters sidebar is not visible, open it by choosing View → Filters. This sidebar may be docked to any edge of the Tecplot Chorus window, combined with the Properties sidebar, or dragged out of the Tecplot Chorus window entirely and positioned on any display.

Each active variable in the project is displayed in the Filters panel along with a control that allows you to restrict the cases included in the plot or matrix based on the variable’s value. (See Managing Filters to learn how to choose which variables appear in the Filters sidebar.) The sidebar scrolls vertically if not all the filters fit in the sidebar at once.

Tecplot Chorus initially displays filters for all the variables in your project. You can change which variables appear in the Filters panel by clicking the gear icon in the Filters panel and choosing Select Filters to Include (see Managing Filters).

The filter settings are made visible in the List view, the Selected Cases view, and optionally in the 2D Scatter plot. This feature is called constraint visualization. For more details, see:

Tecplot Chorus provides four different types of filters. Initially, parameters having a small number of discrete values use a Checkbox filter, while other variables default to a Range filter. You may, however, change the filter type for any parameter by right-clicking the filter and choosing the desired filter type from the pop-up menu.

The Listbox is functionally similar to the Checkbox filter type, but is better suited for variables having a larger number of discrete values. Also, in a Listbox, it is easier to select one value at a time, or to select ranges of values, than in a Checkbox.

Your filter settings are saved with sessions (see Sessions).

To open a new matrix view, choose View → New Matrix View, or click in the toolbar.

Tecplot Chorus’s Matrix view displays thumbnails of images associated with the cases in your project in a grid, allowing you to quickly sanity-check your solutions and dive deeper into any case that looks interesting. These images may be produced by a postprocessor or by Tecplot Chorus itself (see Creating Images). Tecplot Chorus links externally-generated images to their case when the project is created (or when data is appended to it).

Rows in the matrix represent values of one parameter, while columns represent values of another. The grid may optionally be broken into pages based on values of a third parameter. Each discrete value of a selected parameter found in the project is given its own row, column, or page, respectively.

If your project is very sparse, or if not all your cases have images associated with them, your matrix may appear mostly blank, and you may have some trouble finding the cases you want. You can use filters (see Filters) and the other views to help you home in on cases of interest.

Conversely, a given cell in the matrix could represent more than one case based on values of one or more of the project’s variables that you have not assigned to rows, columns, or pages. For example, if you have variables a, b, c, and d, and have assigned a and b to rows and columns, then a cell at a=1, b=2 represents cases that have those values of a and b but any values of c and/or d, and this could be any number of cases, any of which may have at least one image associated with them.

When more than one case is matched by matrix cell, a badge appears in the cell with the thumbnail. The actual thumbnail that appears in the cell is a representative image chosen by Tecplot Chorus from one of the cases. You can turn on labels to see exactly which case’s thumbnail is being shown (see Matrix View Properties), and you can choose the values selected for any variables not employed in the matrix by using a single-value filter (see Filters).

Hovering the mouse pointer over a cell reveals the number of additional cases represented by the cell (for cells that match more than one case), along with information about the thumbnail, such as its path and its case’s Case ID.

The Zoom slider at the bottom right of the window adjusts the size of the thumbnails shown in the matrix.

Tag groups make it easy to organize and work with various combinations of related images. For example, suppose your project contains surface, streamtrace, and volume plots, each from three different angles, for every case you’ve run. You might want to create a set of tag groups that selects all styles of plots from a single angle, and another set of tag groups that selects all angles of a single plot. Any number of tag groups may be created, and each group can contain any of the image tags in the project.

You’ll see your tag groups displayed in the Show Images with Tags list in the Properties sidebar panel of matrix views and of image viewer windows. (Groups are prefaced with "Group:" in this list.) Turning on or off a group activates or deactivates all the tags in the group for display in the matrix or image viewer, just as if you had turned them all on or off individually. The order of the tags in the group determines the order the tags are displayed in image or matrix views.

To edit tag groups, you use the Tag Groups dialog, accessible via the Tag Groups button in the matrix view or image viewer Properties panel.

In the Tag Groups dialog, you can:

The Tag Groups dialog may be left open while you work and positioned out of the way or on a second display, so it is always available to manage your tags. Changes you make to the order of tags in a tag group are reflected instantly in any open matrix views or image viewer windows that are displaying images by tag.

Tecplot Chorus provides both 2D and 3D scatter plots. To open a new scatter plot, choose New 2D Scatter Plot or New 3D Scatter Plot from the View menu, or click or in the toolbar.

Scatter plots are useful to visualize trends and correlations between two or more variables. On a scatter plot, each case appears as a single scatter symbol. Its position represents two (or three, in the case of a 3D plot) variables, and its color—and in a 3D plot, its size—can represent an additional variable or two.

2D scatter plots are useful for comparing two main variables. For example, it can reveal a relationship between an independent and dependent variable, or correlations between two dependent variables. 2D scatter plots can also be used for visualization of constraints.

3D scatter plots are typically used in situations where two variables (which appear on the X and Y axes) affect, or are correlated with, the result of a third (which appears on the Z axis). The 3D scatter plot can be rotated interactively to reveal details that may not be apparent from all angles (see Zooming, Translating, and Rotating Scatter Plots).

Scatter plots may be saved as a PNG (Portable Network Graphics) file by right-clicking the plot and choosing Save Plot as Image from the context menu, or by clicking the Save Plot as Image button in the plot’s sidebar. The saved image is the same size as the version of the plot displayed on the screen.

To open a new line or symbol plot, choose View → New Line Plot, or click in the toolbar.

Line plots are often used to visualize how an input (independent variable) affects an output (dependent variable). They are especially useful for comparing magnitude of change between one data point and the next. Adjacent points are always connected by straight lines, making any deviations from an expected progression immediately obvious.

The line plot can display symbols at each data point in addition to, or instead of, lines between them. Symbols-only mode is often used when the values being displayed are discrete rather than continuous, such as in this plot showing the number of iterations a solution requires to converge for each Mach value simulated.

Line and symbol plots may be saved as a PNG (Portable Network Graphics) file by right-clicking the plot and choosing Save Plot as Image from the context menu, or by clicking the Save Plot as Image button in the plot’s sidebar. The saved image is the same size as the on-screen version of the plot.

By default, Tecplot Chorus uses the minimum and maximum values of the variable assigned to an axis as that axis’s range, and automatically determines the spacing of the grid. These settings can be adjusted for each plot by clicking the Axis Details button in the plot’s Properties sidebar.

The dialog has a page for each axis in the plot. Shown here is the Axis Details dialog for a 2D Scatter Plot, which has two axes. The 3D Scatter Plot has three tabs, since it has three axes. The contents of each tab are the same.

A Table view is a simple spreadsheet-like listing of the values of each variable for every case in the project.

To open a new Table view, choose View → New Table View or click the button in the toolbar. Rows represent cases and columns represent variables. You can scroll the table horizontally or vertically if necessary to see all the data in the project, and sort by the value of any variable by clicking a column header. (Clicking the same column header again reverses the sort order.) Drag the column headers to rearrage the display order of the variables; this is saved in the session file.