VisIt — The Complete Guide: Free Visualization of Large Simulation Results
VisIt is an open-source visualization tool developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for datasets too large to fit in a desktop machine’s memory. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.
VisIt — Simulation Results Visualization
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Scientific visualization tool for large datasets from FEA and CFD simulations.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Slices and surfaces — cut planes, isosurfaces and colouring by field.
- Streamlines — flow paths and particles in CFD results.
- Time animation — following results across time steps.
- Run comparison — showing several scenarios side by side.
- Many formats — dozens of formats, including OpenFOAM output, Exodus and Silo.
Distributed mode
The main advantage: the graphical interface runs on your computer, while reading and processing the data happen on a server or compute cluster. That way you do not move terabytes of results across the network. VisIt parallels ParaView; anyone working with output from government or academic solvers may find better support for their format here.
Related tools
For the most widely used alternative — ParaView. For flow simulation — OpenFOAM. For finite element structural analysis — code_aster.
ParaView
Kitware / Sandia / Los Alamos
Large-scale simulation post-processing — slices, streamlines and animation.
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OpenFOAM
OpenFOAM Foundation
Comprehensive CFD solvers — flow, turbulence, heat transfer and multiphase. Text-file driven, no GUI.
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Code_Aster
EDF
EDF industrial finite element solver — nonlinear, dynamic and thermo-mechanical, open source.
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Gmsh
Gmsh Project
FEA mesh generator with built-in geometry and scripting — standard infrastructure for open numerical work.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
VisIt is a professional tool for heavy simulation results, completely free, including for commercial use.