Scientific computing and data visualization.

[Matteo]

Fie Pye wrote:
> Hallo
>
> 	I would like to have a high class open source tools for scientific computing and powerful 2D and 3D data visualisation. Therefore I chose python, numpy and scipy as a base. Now I am in search for a visualisation tool. I tried matplotlib and py_opendx with OpenDx. OpenDx seems to me very good but the project py_opendx looks like closed. After py_opendx instalation and subsequent testing I got an error that needs discussion with author or an experienced user. Unfortunately a mail to author returned as undeliverable.
>
> 	Does anybody now about suitable visualisation tool?
>
> 	Does anybody have an experience with OpenDx and py_opendx instalation?
>
> 	Thanks for your response.
>
> 	fiepye

As another poster pointed out below, VTK is a very strong vis tool. It
is actively supported and has bindings to several languages (C++,
Python, Java, and Tcl at last count). I have used the combination of
python and VTK together to produce many scientific visualizations,
including production quality animations (Usually, I use Python/VTK to
generate isosurfaces or the like, and import the resulting geometry
data into Maya or another high-quality renderer)

One hurdle to overcome is transferring array data from Numeric/Numpy
into VTK. I have a sort of ad-hoc method to do that (mainly for volume
data). If anyone knows of any elegant solution, or a module to ease the
pain, I'd like to hear about it.

If you are working with NetCDF files, you may wish to add
ScientificPython (distinct from SciPy) to your toolset. It has a very
nice NetCDF interface. Unfortunately, it is ancient, and you would have
to install Numeric Python (ancestor to NumPy). However, it is easy to
convert Numeric arrays into Numpy arrays:
>>> my_numpy_array=numpy.array(my_numeric_array)


-matt