Quick Start

This page gives you an introduction on how to get started with PyTecplot. For installation and system requirements, see the installation instructions.

Hello World

Here is a simple PyTecplot script which creates a simple plot with some text and export an image of that plot. Note that the Tecplot 360 License is acquired automatically on the first call into the PyTecplot API:

import logging
logging.basicConfig(level=logging.DEBUG)

import tecplot

# Run this script with "-c" to connect to Tecplot 360 on port 7600
# To enable connections in Tecplot 360, click on:
#   "Scripting" -> "PyTecplot Connections..." -> "Accept connections"
import sys
if '-c' in sys.argv:
    tecplot.session.connect()

tecplot.new_layout()

frame = tecplot.active_frame()
frame.add_text('Hello, World!', position=(36, 50), size=34)
tecplot.export.save_png('hello_world.png', 600, supersample=3)

After running this script, you should have a PNG image like this:

Zero-based Indexing

It is important to know that all indices in PyTecplot scripts are zero-based. This is different from the Tecplot macro language, which is one-based. This is to keep with the expectations when working in the python language. However, PyTecplot does not modify strings that are passed to the Tecplot Engine. This means that one-based indexing should be used when running macro commands from python or when using execute_equation().

Macro Integration

All macro commands can be executed from an active PyTecplot session. This means you may wrap all of your existing macro commands into a python script and one-by-one move the commands into native Python code. The “Hello, World!” example above could have been written like this:

>>> import tecplot
>>> tecplot.macro.execute_command(r'''
...   $!ATTACHTEXT
...     ANCHORPOS { X = 35 Y = 50 }
...     TEXTSHAPE { HEIGHT = 35 }
...     TEXT = 'Hello, World!'
...   $!EXPORTSETUP EXPORTFNAME = 'hello_world.png'
...   $!EXPORT
...     EXPORTREGION = CURRENTFRAME
... ''')

We could pull out just the image creation part into Python by writing this:

>>> import tecplot
>>> tecplot.macro.execute_command(r'''
...   $!ATTACHTEXT
...     ANCHORPOS { X = 35 Y = 50 }
...     TEXTSHAPE { HEIGHT = 35 }
...     TEXT = 'Hello, World!'
... ''')
>>> tecplot.export.save_png('hello_world.png', 600, supersample=3)

For more information, see the tecplot.macro reference documentation.

Getting Help

Examples can be found in the pytecplot/examples directory and the primary documentation (in HTML format) can found under pytecplot/docs/html which is generated directly from the source code under pytecplot/tecplot. In addition, all imported objects and methods that are part of the public API have doc strings which can be accessed with python’s native help() function. Users are encouraged to contact support@tecplot.com for any questions they may have.