The application visualization system: a computational environment for scientific visualization

A software system for developing interactive scientific visualization applications quickly, with a minimum of programming effort, is described. This application visualization system (AVS) is an application framework targeted at scientists and engineers. The goal of the system is to make applications that combine interactive graphics and high computational requirements easier to develop for both programmers and nonprogrammers. AVS is designed around the concept of software building blocks, or modules, which can be interconnected to form visualization applications. AVS allows flow networks of existing modules to be constructed using a direct-manipulation user interface, and it automatically generates a simple user interface to each module. >