Viewing a grid (or a grid and solution together) in Tecplot can be difficult since Tecplot has no knowledge of the object of interest and will simply show all blocks (zones), making it hard to visualize the surface and/or surface solution if those are what are of interest. You can, of course, manually select all blocks which are on the surface and only show the face that matches the surface, but that is tedious, particularly for large multiblock grids. The gen_surfsym_layout script simplifies this by taking the information in the grid.con file and converting it into a Tecplot layout file called surfsym.lay. The gen_surfsym_layout utility is included in the grid_utils distribution with Jetstream. So, once that suite of utilities is compiled (do a make in the jetstream/grid_utils/code directory) it can simply be run with
>> gen_surfsym_layout
The utility can be used to create a layout file that shows either the surface, the surface and symmetry plane, and those two surfaces together with the solution in Tecplot. When run, it will ask for the following input:
The name of the grid file, e.g. grid.g, that you want to view the surfaces of
The corresponding grid connectivity file, e.g. grid.con. Note that the grid size specified in the connectivity files does not need to match that in the grid file, e.g. GRID% RESIZE can be used, since the layout file produced will just indicate the min or max index with no actual number.
How many frames you want the resulting layout file to produce
Which boundaries you want the layout file to show
The script will generate the layout file surfsym.lay which you can transfer to your local computer where you have Tecplot, along with the grid file (and the results file if the solution plot was requested in Step 4 above.) Place all these files in the same location on your local computer and open the layout file with Tecplot. It will load the grid (and if appropriate the solution file) and only show the grid (and solution) on the surface and/or symmetry plane.