A visualization tool for the scientist/engineer

Continuing advances in supercomputer technology give the scientist/engineer the ability to run increasingly complex computational experiments and simulations. Gaining insight from the flood of simulation results is a difficult task for the scientist. This paper presents the Visual Interpretation System (VIS), an easy to use, interactive, discipline-independent tool for understanding multidimensional data sets. Components of the VIS are a database manager, a user interface, and a visualization manager. The database manager facilitates discipline-independent visualization and lets the scientist manipulate data with familiar names and attributes. The visualization manager uses an optical model to generate 3D images with a variety of options including opaque and transparent structures, cutouts, and region highlighting. The effectiveness of the VIS is demonstrated using data from a 3D simulation of a transistor device.