PostCactus

This repository contains a Python package named PostCactus for postprocessing data from numerical simulations performed with the Einstein Toolkit. The package provides a high-level Python interface to the various data formats in a simulation folder.

Installation

Currently, the onyl method is to clone the repo and pip-install locally from it. We recommend to install into a conda Python evironment, even though there is no conda package for PostCactus yet.

git clone https://github.com/wokast/PyCactus.git
pip install ./pycactus/PostCactus

Requirements

• Python >=3 (2.7 still supported but deprecated)
• h5py
• numpy, scipy

Optional

• jupyter (recommended)
• matplotlib (visualization)
• Sphinx (rebuild documentation)
• VTK (3D plots)

Documentation

A copy of the docuentation can be found here

Documentation can also be build from the repository. This requires Sphinx.

cd pycyctus/PostCactus/doc
make html

The folder PostCactus/doc/examples/notebooks/ contains some example jupyter notebooks (note: not updated to Python3 yet)

Other

Besides PostCactus, two commandline tools are included:

• pardiff compares parameter files.
• simsync uses rsync to transfer selected data types from simulation folders.

This repository also contains two packages that are not maintained. SimRep allows the automatic creation of html reports for a simulation, and the SimVideo package allows the creation of movies visualizing simulation data. For further information, see the README files of the individual packages.

Similar packages

Kuibit is a reverse-engineered rewrite of PostCactus, with improved packaging, user interface, and documentation. Performance may differ. The two interfaces are similar enough to try code with PostCactus in case Kuibit does not work.

SimulationTools is a free package for the non-free Mathematica environment, providing functionality very similar to PostCactus.