High Quality FEM-Postprocessing and Visualization Using a Gnuplot Based Toolchain

Authors: Janine Glänzel and Roman Unger

Here are example files, scripts e.g. located, for paper download see Publication list

Scripts and Makefile

Example gnuplots/Makefile and the Perl script gnuplots/DoPic.pl for picture creation for download and storage in a subfolder, named gnuplots.

Example for (V1)

Visualization of the temporal development of a single node value at fixed position x0 for example for the temperature value T (x0, t) or a displacement.

Starting point is a two column datafile like gnuplots/example_v1/V1.dat holding the values for t and T(t), in the example we use t=0:0.1:10 and T(t)=exp(t/10)+cos(t) and move the T-values 12.3 with the 'using' command inside the gnuplot script.

After creating the gnuplot script gnuplots/example_v1.txt and registration of this script in the Makefile by adding the line

ALLPLOTS += example_v1.pdf
a call of
make
will produce:
gnuplots/example_v1.pdf for direct usage with \includegraphics and
gnuplots/example_v1-input.tex which can be used with \input{gnuplots/example_v1-input.tex}

Example for (V2)

For mesh and displacement plotting we use a datafile, holding (x1,x2) and (u1,u2) values for each finite element. As example see example_v2/mesh1.txt.

The corresponding gnuplot command file example_v2.txt creates the plot of mesh and displacement example_v2.pdf

Example for (V3)

Plotting colored scalar fields, like in the example example_v3.pdf the norm |u| of the displacement, or temperature values needs a datafile which holds in a line 4 (x1,x2,v) triplets for the node values of an element. As an example see example_v3/frame1.txt.

The script gnuplot_solution.pl converts this to a corresponding gnuplot command file like example_v3.txt which can be added to the Makefile and used to create the final plot example_v3.pdf