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Controls & Display

Mouse controls

Input Action
Right-click drag Arcball rotation around world origin
Middle-click drag Pan (translate view)
Scroll up/down Zoom in/out (perspective and orthographic)

The rotation uses a true Shoemake arcball -- drawing circles with the mouse returns to exactly the starting orientation (no drift).

Tabbed control panel

The right dock panel is organized into two tabs: Results and View.

Results tab

Result Selection

  • Category: Nodal or Element
  • Result: e.g. DISPLACEMENT, section.fiber.stress
  • Component: e.g. Ux, C0, von Mises

When component names in the HDF5 file are "Unknown", ops-post falls back to generic labels (C0, C1, C2, ...).

Element Display Mode

Only visible when an Element result is selected.

For non-fiber results (e.g. section.stress):

  • Contour (averaged): extrapolates GP values to nodes, displays as a smooth contour on the mid-surface.
  • GP Spheres (fiber-level): shows colored spheres at Gauss point locations. You can select a specific GP and fiber layer.

For fiber results (e.g. section.fiber.stress):

  • The mode selector, GP dropdown, and fiber dropdown are hidden.
  • All GP x fiber points are shown simultaneously as scaled spheres.
  • Sphere radius is proportional to the absolute value of the result.
  • The Point size slider controls the maximum sphere radius.

Display Options

Control Effect
Disp. Scale Displacement magnification factor (spinbox + slider)
Show Shells Toggle shell element visibility
Show Beams Toggle beam element visibility
Show Edges Toggle element edge lines
Show Extrusion Toggle transparent thickness extrusion
Show Fiber Layers Toggle fiber layer edge lines (auto-hidden when GP spheres are active)
Grid Toggle floor grid visibility
Grid spacing Floor grid line spacing (in model units)

Note

Fiber layer edge lines are automatically hidden when GP spheres are active to avoid visual clutter.

Time Step

Control Effect
Step slider Jump to any analysis step
|< First step
< Previous step
Play/Pause Animate through all steps
> Next step
>| Last step
FPS Animation speed (frames per second)

The Min/Max label at the bottom shows the range of the currently displayed scalar field.

View tab

Camera

Control Effect
Front / Back / Left / Right / Top / Bottom / Iso Standard camera presets
Orthographic / Perspective Projection mode toggle

Figure

Controls for publication-ready output. All settings apply immediately -- no Apply button needed.

Control Effect
Colormap Color scheme: jet, coolwarm, viridis, plasma, turbo, RdYlBu_r, hot_r, YlOrRd, inferno_r
Viewport W / H Viewport size in pixels (default 1200 x 800)
Aspect presets 16:9, 4:3, 3:2, 1:1, 2:1 -- adjusts H to match W
Scale bar orientation Vertical or Horizontal
Scale bar position Top-Left, Top-Right, Bottom-Left, Bottom-Right
Scale bar W / H Width and height of the scale bar (fraction of viewport)
Scale bar font Font size for scale bar labels
Title override Custom title text for the scale bar (overrides auto-generated)
Scale range min Optional minimum value -- values below are clamped
Scale range max Optional maximum value -- values above are clamped
GP zero mode "Zero at 0" (stress: +/- around zero) or "Zero at min" (damage: 0-to-max)

Tip

The viewport size is fixed (not tied to window size). Resize it only through the W/H spinners in the View tab to get consistent figure dimensions for publications.

Export

Control Effect
Save Figure Save current view as PNG (1x/2x/3x/4x resolution), SVG vector, or PDF vector
Record Animation Choose output file (GIF or MP4) first, then auto-plays from current step, auto-stops and saves at the last step

When recording an animation:

  1. Click Record Animation and choose a filename (.gif or .mp4).
  2. Playback starts automatically from the current step.
  3. Recording stops and saves automatically at the last step.

MP4 uses bundled ffmpeg via imageio. If ffmpeg is unavailable, the recording falls back to GIF format.

The animation uses the current FPS setting for playback speed.