Scientific Visualization 101: ParaView for HPC
Date
- Wednesday, April 15, 2026
- 1:30pm - 3:30pm
Venue
- Building 1, Level 2, Room 2418
Organizer
James Kress & Thomas Theussl
Visualization Core Laboratory
james.kress@kaust.edu.sa
Register
Workshop Materials
- Materials will be added prior to the workshop.
How to Prepare?
- Prior Knowledge: A working knowledge of ParaView is assumed for this workshop. We recommend reviewing the following past sessions if you are unfamiliar with the basics:
- Hardware: Bring a laptop with ParaView installed.
- ParaView version 5.13.1 is recommended. Download it from ParaView.org.
- HPC Access: Ensure your Ibex and Shaheen accounts are active for the remote connection exercises.
Overview
Visualization experts Thomas Theussl and James Kress will lead this session on scaling your scientific visualization workflows. ParaView is a professional-quality, open-source application designed to analyze extremely large datasets using distributed memory computing resources.
The workshop is designed to take users from basic desktop interaction to advanced high-performance computing (HPC) environments. We will begin with a foundational introduction to ParaView's interface and logic before moving into the specifics of leveraging KAUST's supercomputing clusters.
Key Learning Objectives:
- ParaView Core: Master the pipeline browser, properties, and essential filters.
- HPC Workflows: Establish remote client-server connections to Ibex and Shaheen.
- Automation: Use Python scripting to record and execute non-interactive visualization tasks.
- Efficiency: Learn to scale from your local workstation to thousands of cores for large-scale data analysis.
Who Should Attend?
KAUST researchers, engineers, and students who have outgrown their local workstation capabilities and need to learn how to script and scale their visualizations on Ibex and Shaheen. This is also applicable to those outside of KAUST who want to learn the concepts of ParaView on HPC to apply to their own clusters.
Agenda
| Time | Topic | Speaker |
|---|---|---|
| 1:30pm - 2:30pm | ParaView Intro: UI Fundamentals, Data Loading, and 3D Visualization | Thomas Theussl |
| 2:30pm - 2:40pm | Coffee Break | |
| 2:40pm - 3:30pm | ParaView for HPC: Remote Connections to Ibex/Shaheen, Python Scripting, and Batch Workflows | James Kress |
| 3:30pm | Q&A / Final Discussion | James & Thomas |