ParaView is an open-source, multi-platform application designed to visualize data sets of size varying from small to very large. The goals of the ParaView project include the following:
- Develop an open-source, multi-platform visualization application.
- Support distributed computation models to process large data sets.
- Create an open, flexible, and intuitive user interface.
- Develop an extensible architecture based on open standards.
ParaView runs on distributed and shared memory parallel as well as single processor systems and has been succesfully tested on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and various Unix workstations, clusters and supercomputers. Under the hood, ParaView uses the Visualization Toolkit as the data processing and rendering engine and has a user interface written using Qt®.
The ParaView project started started in 2000 as a collaborative effort between Kitware Inc. and Los Alamos National Laboratory. The initial funding was provided by a three year contract with the US Department of Energy ASCI Views program. Today, ParaView development continues as a collaboration between Kitware, Sandia National Labs, CSimSoft, Los Alamos National Lab, Army Research Lab and others.
