Tecplot on Apple Silicon

Are Tecplot products supported on Apple Silicon (aka M1, M2, and M3 chips)?  Yes. Tecplot 360, FieldView, Tecplot Focus, and PyTecplot all run on Apple Silicon based machines. That said, you’ll need Rosetta 2 to run them. If Rosetta 2 isn’t already installed on your mac, see this article for installation instructions.    But PyTecplot in batch mode doesn’t work on my Apple Silicon machine!  In order to use PyTecplot […]

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Converting Variables Between Cell Centered and Nodal

Question: How do I convert a cell centered variable to be nodal, or vice versa? Solution: This can be done by creating a new variable in the Specify Equations dialog (Data>Alter>Specify Equations). By using the new var location field, a new variable equal to an existing variable can be created with values stored in either location. For example, say a dataset has a cell centered variable named Velocity: To convert […]

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Automatic Connection to a License Server When Starting Tecplot 360

Problem: I want Tecplot 360 to automatically connect to a license server upon startup in the GUI or in batch mode.   Solution: Tecplot 360 offers two methods to automatically connect to a license server: creating an environment variable or updating a license file. Automatically connecting to a license server is especially important with headless machines. See more details on these two methods in the sections below.   Method 1 […]

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Tecplot 360 hangs during movie creation when running tec360 in the background

Problem: Tecplot 360 appears to hang at the end of movie generation running ‘tec360 &’ (running 360 in the background). This is a known issue with the FFmpeg executable, which Tecplot 360 uses to create movie files. Solution: Include ‘-nostdin’ to the AVI, WMV, or MP4 Format Options in your tecplot.cfg file to avoid a FFmpeg hang if you’re running tec360 on Linux in the background. For example: $!ExportSetup MPEGFormatOptions […]

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Creating Geometric Regions

A quick reference guide on how to create different geometric regions can be found at the bottom of this article. In Tecplot 360, users may need to create a geometric region to perform operations such as extracting or blanking data. For example, an internal combustion engineer may want to quantify the temperature within a certain radius of a spark plug. By generating a sphere region around the spark plug and […]

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Troubleshooting Linux Crashes

Problem: I get a crash running Tecplot 360 on my Linux operating system. Solution: Note: The 2020 R1 release of Tecplot 360 introduced a change in the way Tecplot is rendered in mesa. See the Troubleshooting chapter of the User’s Manual for more information (also at the bottom of this article). We’ve written up some instructions for responding to Linux crashes. Please check these questions: 1)  Double-check that your graphics […]

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Support for macOS Big Sur

Both Tecplot 360 and Focus 2020 R2 are supported on macOS Big Sur (11.0); however, the 2020 R1 releases for these products do not support Big Sur. If you’ve updated to Big Sur and need access to Tecplot products, please use Tecplot 360 or Focus 2020 R2 or newer. Downloads can be found on the MyTecplot portal. Updated 12/14/2020.


Linux Remote Display Issues

Problem: I receive a GLX error when remotely displaying Tecplot 360 on my Linux machine. Solution: First be sure your graphics drivers are up to date from your graphics provider (i.e. NVIDIA, AMD, etc.). If that doesn’t solve your problem, it is likely an issue with Indirect OpenGL Rendering being disabled. On newer Linux systems, NVIDIA and others are no longer starting X11 servers with indirect OpenGL enabled. Indirect rendering […]

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Setting Custom Color Maps as Defaults

Problem: How do I set a custom color map as my default color map for a contour group? Solution: This solution consists of two parts, moving the .map file to the colormaps directory and editing the tecplot.cfg  file. First, save the color map file containing your custom color map into the colormaps  directory. This directory is found within the Tecplot installation directory. It is possible, and acceptable, for this .map […]

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Understanding and Automating Viewer Position Angles

Problem: How do I change the viewing angles Psi, Alpha, and Theta from the viewer’s perspective? Also, please help me understand how these angles are defined. Solution: Below is a diagram from the 360 User’s Manual describing how Tecplot defines Psi (Ψ), Theta (θ), and Alpha (α). The following exercise uses PyTecplot to change each of the three angles by 5 degrees and manifests the result after each step. 1)  […]

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