Modernizing Graphics in Ansys Mechanical​

"Ansys Mechanical has historically been architected around OpenGL Display Lists for rendering. This is an outdated technology which has been deprecated for many years in favor of newer techniques and technologies. This architecture also forces Mechanical to only use OpenGL for rendering rather than exploring other graphics APIs such as Vulkan. Moreover, this architecture mostly relies on stream-based rendering where client code tells the rendering system how to render instead of what to render. This rigid and opaque system makes it difficult to modify, reuse, or share data for graphic changes.

Over the past few years there have been efforts to use modern technologies like VAO (Vertex Array Objects), VBO (Vertex Buffer Objects) and Shader Based Rendering, along with efficient data structures like Scenegraphs. A Scenegraph is a graph structure which holds information describing a 3D scene allowing client code to dictate what to render instead of how to render. This allows us to share relevant data between nodes and only change what is needed between different nodes and results (such as an alternate result array). This also will allow for experimentation with alternate graphics systems (such as Vulkan) in the future.

These efforts have allowed us to make significant performance gains for displaying contours and animations for large models. It has also enabled us to implement new features in Mechanical including (but not limited to) Chart Overlays in Graphics, Multi Viewport Animation, Enhanced Probe Text Rendering, Anti Aliasing, and Hidden Mesh Line Removal."