Output data from tools must be managed. Again this will differ for new and legacy tools. A distinction may be necessary between “final” output data and data which is to be passed to another tool (e.g. grid information passed to a solver tool.) Where possible use numarray, especially to connect to python driven plotting capabilities.

The open source options for supporting Visualization from the Python language includes wrappers for many well known plotting and rendering libraries. There are also plotting tools that have been built from the ground up with Python. One example of a high quality visualization package available for python is the Chaco plotting package. This tool was built for theSciPy framework as a Python native plotting solution. The  Chaco Documentation states, "Chaco is an open source and freely available plotting package being developed to address many of the plotting needs of the scientific and engineering communities." The following example from the User's Guide illustrates the capabilities of this tool:

This example was constructed using Chaco. The slider bars can be used to adjust the parameters in a equation. The tool was created using less than 100 lines of Python. (The example is from the Chaco Screen Shots page at Enthought.)

Visualization in 3-D

Using Python will not be a limitations when Field Marshal expands to include 3-D simulations. Python is well suited to 3-D application domains. Python is a favorite language in the animation industry. They use Python extensively to script movies. Python is also used in chemistry modeling software and other scientific application domains that rely on 3-D graphics. The Python 3D Software Collection lists many examples of 3-D visualization software packages available for Python.

Another example from the SciPy project is the following Interactive 3-D plot:

References

This is not an exaustive list of plotting applications for Python.

1. The matplotlib 2D plotting library.
   
2. The MayaVi is a free, easy to use scientific data visualizer.
3. Gnuplot.py is a Python package that interfaces to gnuplot, the popular open-source plotting program.
4. PyChart is a Python library for creating high quality Encapsulated Postscript, PDF, PNG, or SVG charts.
5. Additional visualization options are listed in the Python Cheese Shop in the Scientific/Engineering topic.