Visualizing Scenes and Plots defined in the Reference Simulation

When each design simulation completes, Design Manager exports chosen scenes and plots and makes them available for you to view.

In Design Manager, a snapshot allows you to display a specific scene or a specific plot for the designs within a design set. Locking a snapshot to a specific design allows you to compare the design with other designs in the design set.

To create a snapshot:
  1. Right-click the Snapshots node and select New > [snapshot type], where [snapshot type] can be Scene Snapshot or Plot Snapshot.
  2. Select the new snapshot node and set the following properties:
    • Design Study: The design study from which to extract the snapshot data.
    • Design Set: The design set within the specified design study from which to extract data.
    • Scene/Plot: The scene or plot of interest.

    Design displays the name of the design that is visualized in the specified scene or plot.

To add additional information to the snapshot display in the Graphics window, such as the name or the performance value of the visualized design:
  1. Select the Snapshots > [snapshot] > Annotations node and set Annotations to Design Name or Performance Value, respectively.
    Design Manager allows you to create and add additional simple text annotations. For more information, see Tools Reference—Annotations.

You can step through the designs of the specified design set using the Design Manager Snapshot toolbar, see Toolbar Reference:



Alternatively, you can select a design of interest in an output table or in a project plot. The snapshot is then updated automatically to reflect the selected design. For more information, see Exploring the Analysis in Design Manager.

To compare snapshots for different designs:

  1. Create multiple snapshots, where each snapshot displays the same scene or plot.
  2. In the Graphics window, arrange the snapshot panels side by side.
  3. For each snapshot, select the snapshot node and set the following properties:
    • Lock Design: Activate (activates the Design property).
    • Design: Set the design you want to compare.
    When you unlock one of the snapshots, you can step through the designs of the specified design set and compare the locked designs with the remaining ones.


You can interact with snapshots that refer to scenes and plots that are exported as STAR-View File (see Setting Up a Design Study) as you would with the respective scene or plot in Simcenter STAR-CCM+. For example, you can rotate the view, zoom in and out, or play animations. To improve understanding of results, you can link multiple snapshots so that they move in tandem as you interact with one of them.

To set up a link among snapshots:

  1. Using <Ctrl>, multi-select the snapshots you wish to link.
  2. Right-click and select Linked View.
    A chain-link icon appears at the bottom right corner of the snapshot node icons.
  3. Interact with one of the snapshots.
    The linked snapshots are synchronized automatically.


To export a snapshot to an image file:
  1. Right-click the snapshot node and select Hardcopy. Using <Ctrl>, you can select and export multiples snapshots.
    A customized, operating system-specific Save To File dialog appears, which allows you to write the selected snapshot to file. This dialog also appears if you right-click the background of a snapshot in the Graphics window, from which a single image file of the current snapshot can be saved.
To propagate the post-defined scenes or plots in the reference simulation to all the designs:
  1. Save the reference simulation.
  2. Right-click the Design Studies > [design study] node and select Update Results. See also: Asynchronous Post-Processing.