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News:

May 16th 2012:
v2.1.0 released.

Aug 29th 2011:
v2.0 beta released.

Aug 29th 2011:
v1.15.0 released.

Mar 17th 2011:
v1.14.1 released.

Dec 6th 2010:
v1.14.0 released.

Feb 26th 2010:
v1.13.1 released. Recommended for all users!

Feb 25th 2010:
v1.13.0 released.

Jan 18th 2010:
Great things afoot...

Jul 15th 2009:
v1.12.2 released.

Apr 20th 2009:
v1.12.1 released.

Dec 22nd 2008:
v1.12.0 released. Merry Christmas!

Oct 13th 2008:
v1.11.1 released. Recommended for all users!

Oct 13th 2008:
SPLASH mailing lists started (as Google Groups).

Sep 3rd 2008:
New SPLASH website launched.

Sep 1st 2008:
Arrived in Melbourne!

more »

Current Status

The current release is 2.1.0 (16th May 2012) (click to see downloadable files). For a brief description of new features see the version history in the userguide. For a complete list of changes since previous versions see the change log.

Documentation (user guide):

The SPLASH userguide may be downloaded as a pdf, or by browsing the html version.

There is also a paper describing the basic algorithms implemented in SPLASH, which should be cited whenever you use SPLASH for scientific purposes (cite as Price, 2007, Publ. Astron. Soc. Aust., 24, 159-173).

Latest News

16th May 2012: v2.1.0 released.

First stable release with the giza backend. New features are as in 2.0-beta, plus:

Get it from the download page.

1/5/12: SPLASH on the cover of A&A!

Shazrene Mohamed's beautiful SPLASH-made images from simulations of Betelgeuse's bow shock made the front cover of Astronomy & Astrophysics

29/08/11: v2.0 beta released.

This is a beta release of SPLASH 2.0. New features are as in 1.15.0, plus:

Initially users will notice relatively few changes from the old PGPLOT backend, except that plots look *a lot* nicer. Indeed for backwards compatibility SPLASH can still be compiled with PGPLOT as the backend using "make BACKEND=pgplot". However, this will become progressively more obsolete as features not supported in PGPLOT are added over time (e.g. double rendering).

Please *let me know* of any problems you encounter using the beta version.

» news archive

About

SPLASH is a free visualisation tool for exploring output from Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations in one, two and three dimensions, focussed mainly on astrophysical applications. It is written in Fortran 90 and utilises the giza/cairo graphics libraries to do the actual plotting. It is based around a command-line menu structure but utilises the interactive capabilities of giza to manipulate data interactively in the plotting window.

SPLASH is a fully interactive program which means that visualisations can be changed rapidly at the touch of a button (e.g. zooming, rotating, shifting cross section positions etc). Data is read *directly* from the code dump format giving rapid access to results and the visualisation is advanced forwards and backwards through timesteps by single keystrokes.

SPLASH uses the SPH kernel to render plots of not only density but other physical quantities, giving a smooth representation of the data. My goal is to eliminate the publication of crap-looking particle plots from SPH codes!

Features:

Examples of plots produced with SPLASH can be found in the gallery or by looking at papers with figures produced using splash.

Requirements

SPLASH is written in Fortran 90/95/2003 and comes packaged with the custom-built giza backend graphics library (written in C) which depends only on standard system libraries (cairo and X11). SPLASH can alternatively be compiled using PGPLOT as the backend graphics library.

The free and open source gfortran compiler can be used to compile SPLASH.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Some answers to frequently asked questions (including troubleshooting related to installation problems) are given here.