Transient Animation Toolbar

Control the animation of transient results while post-processing

The Animation toolbar is located at the bottom of the modeling window.



Figure 1.
Rewind
Click to rewind the animation to the beginning of the sequence.
Click to rewind the animation in increments.
Play
Click to start the animation.
Pause
Click to pause the animation.
Fast Forward
Click to forward the animation to the end of the sequence.
Click to forward the animation in increments.
Select a Frame
  • Left-click on a point in the animation sequence or drag the slider.
    The corresponding frame/time displays above your cursor.


    Figure 2.
  • Click the current frame/time, enter a new value, then press Enter.


    Figure 3.

Click to define the following options:

Animate all datasets
When this option is on, all datasets move in time together. When this option is off, only the active dataset moves in time when the you interacts with the toolbar.
Playback display
When this is set to frame number, the toolbar shows the total number of frames present in the dataset. Note that the frame number does not correspond to the output step of the simulation, but rather an index in the array containing the output steps. When the playback display is set to time, then the toolbar shows the simulation time values corresponding to each step.

The following is relevant for notes (annotations) that deal with simulation time.

When loading steady state simulation results from AcuSolve with multiple time steps of output available on disk, the time step is used in place of the actual time. For example, if the simulation output time is 50.0 e10, the time annotation and time value in the animation toolbar shows a value of 50.

"Time" is a global quantity in HyperMesh CFD Post. There are no concerns associated with this when only a single dataset is loaded. However, it does have some implications when working with multiple datasets.

When working with multiple datasets, the following use cases arise:

Multiple datasets, synchronous output, all being advanced in time together
The time annotation always shows the proper time regardless of what dataset is active when the annotation is created.
Multiple datasets, synchronous output, some datasets frozen in time
The time annotation shows the proper time value for whatever dataset is active when it is created. In the case of a frozen dataset and an animating dataset, there can be two different times displayed simultaneously if different annotations are created.
Multiple datasets, asynchronous output, all being advanced in time together
In the case of asynchronous outputs that are being swept in time together, the list of output times from each dataset is merged into a single list. The animation then plays through each time value in sequence. If a given time value is not present in one of the datasets, that dataset snaps to the nearest time value in its own output record. This can lead to a situation where only one of the multiple animating datasets advances in a given frame. However, a time annotation from any dataset at this point will reflect the global value of time and may be out of sync with the actual value of time for the dataset if the global time was not present in the dataset's output time array. The annotation toolbar will reflect global value of time in this situation.
Multiple datasets, asynchronous output, some datasets frozen in time
In the case of asynchronous outputs that are being swept in time together, the list of output times from each dataset is merged into a single list. The animation then plays through each time value in sequence. If a given time value is not present in one of the datasets, that dataset snaps to the nearest time value in it's own output record. This can lead to a situation where only one of the multiple animating datasets advances in a given frame. However, a time annotation from any dataset at this point will reflect the global value of time and may be out of sync with the actual value of time for the dataset if the global time was not present in the dataset's output time array. In the case of a frozen dataset and an animating dataset, there can be two different times displayed simultaneously if different annotations were created. The frozen dataset's annotation will reflect the value of time at the frozen value. The annotation toolbar will reflect global value of time in this situation.