Introduction to AVS

AVS Express is a powerful visualization tool used for numerous applications such as meteorology, astronomy, and biomedical visualization because of its high versatility and industrial strength. Unlike Java and VRML, AVS comes with many advanced features which allow the user to easily convert high resolution CT scans into a visible object in a matter of seconds. In addition to just viewing the object, in AVS one can also perform different functions on the viewed data with ease.

The main premise behind AVS is that the user is given a work sheet onto which they drag in modules which each perform simple functions. Some examples of modules are reading in a field of data (ReadField), converting a field into a 3D model (isosurface), and viewing a rendered scene (UViewer3D). These functions each take in and output data and these inputs and outputs are connected to other modules to create an application.

Using the three mentioned modules we can easily create a simple application. First we would connect the output of ReadField to the input of isosurface and then connect the output of isosurface to the input of UViewer3D. What happens here is ReadField will converts the file into a field, isosurface then creates a 3D model out of that field, and UViewer3D then renders the model. Since AVS could not possibly come with a module to do every possible visualization, there is the ability in AVS to create our own modules which gives us a wide range of possibilities.