Roger Moody, senior computer scientist at

WinPlot software is used to test rocket engines like this one

CSC, had no way of knowing that the

software he designed to support the engineering analysis lab at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) would become the new industry standard. WinPlot, his PC-based graphical analysis tool, has streamlined the process of data analysis and changed the entire process of delivering test stand and flight data to the engineer’s desktop. With no equal in commercial or industrial markets, WinPlot is quickly replacing many previous data analysis systems at other NASA centers, Department of Defense and some aerospace companies.

Engineers at MSFC conduct full space shuttle engine testing, component testing and the analysis of flight data, activities that produce a massive amount of data. WinPlot’s greatest accomplishment is allowing data analysts more control and access to data within minutes of a test or flight. The software is largely interactive, enabling analysts to pinpoint specific parameters during a specific point of the flight in real time and easily manipulate data.

To date, WinPlot has increased accuracy and reduced the average time of a test and the flight data analysis process from 24 hours to four. The software has also helped MSFC reduce IT and support personnel costs by more than 75 percent. Today WinPlot directly supports NASA’s Space Flight, Aerospace Technologies and Space Science Enterprises. WinPlot is currently used on NASA’s Next Generation Launch Technologies (NGLT) and Space Shuttle Programs and is planned for use in the near future on the Operational Space Plane (OSP) and Expendable Launch Vehicle (ELV) Programs.

In recognition of its contribution to propulsion research and development, WinPlot was awarded MSFC 2003 Software of the Year Award and received a nomination for NASA’s 2003 Software of the Year Award.

Evolution of a new process

WinPlot's development was driven by the MSFC engineers' need for more immediate access to test data, which gauges the performance on space shuttle main engines in flight and in testing occurring on the ground. The old process that was used to retrieve and present the data to engineers was cumbersome, says Larry Leopard, group lead for the functional design group at Marshall Space Flight Center, who oversaw Moody and the development of WinPlot.

Previously, a group dedicated to producing printed data books distributed to engineers the test data, which appeared on a time-based plot. If an engineer required further detail, the group accessed the data from a mainframe computer, found the piece of data required by the engineers and republished the data books. “Even with a data room and designated personnel, more than 50 percent of the time the data wasn’t what the engineer needed,” says Leopard.

Moody has automated that process with WinPlot. The data book content was input into the system, a task that required three to four people running two shifts to coordinate. Using a generic data access interface Dynamic Link Library, which provides for calls to other data-specific libraries to retrieve data, they were able to achieve rapid access to test data.

“It used to be that the engineer had to define what he wanted to see and the production staff generated a more detailed book,” says Moody. “But the power to define the parameters and manipulate the data is now in the hands of the engineers. And what used to take hours only now takes minutes to view.”

WinPlot was designed so that a user could install the 2.5 MB executable file in less than one minute and plot data within minutes without any direct training. To achieve these types of results, WinPlot was designed with an internal compression format. Moody says this format is easier to use and maintain on a PC, and likening it to a Zip file, he says that the data is compressed when moving across the network, but the application knows how and when to bring it full scale.

In addition to WinPlot’s unique features, user-friendly features were added, including point-and-click zooming; auto recording of scripts; voice recognition for future handheld computer applications; point-and-click minimum, maximum and average; and selective data plotting based on user-specific criteria. The software also allows data transfer of both plots and tables to and from Microsoft Office applications for integrating data into presentations.

With no limits on the amount of data that can be displayed and/or manipulated, WinPlot has condensed the time and effort used to capture and view data. In short, the number of files or parameters plotted is only limited by the PC’s memory. One of the major goals for WinPlot was to decompress highly compressed data files and plot them on the fly, which it does.

“Now if analysts need to determine the temperature or pressure, they can look at a specific parameter during a specific part of the flight and get that data instantly,” says Moody.

Open source status

Though WinPlot is a complex application, it is easily maintainable and adaptable for use in other software packages to display and analyze model predictions and test data. Because it is written in standard Microsoft Visual C++ and compatible with Windows platforms, the software is rapidly being adopted and used throughout NASA and for commercial use.

In fact, NASA has officially declared WinPlot to be open source software primarily for the purpose of collaboration and joint development with industries that use high sample rate data, or industries aligned with aerospace, says Leopard. “WinPlot was funded with government resources and there is a taxpayer benefit to making the software open to the public,” he says. “Also, NASA could benefit from additions made from companies and organizations in other industries.”

Unique to industry

Though several other commercially available software applications contain plotting/graphing capabilities, they each have limitations with file sizes, number of curves or plots, user setups, plotting speed and ease of use, says Leopard. These tools are sometimes used for data analysis, but since its introduction WinPlot has become the most frequently used tool for high sample rate and multiple data analysis. “There aren’t a lot of commercial tools for analyzing rocket data,” says Leopard.

But since the addition of WinPlot, engineers can do more analysis in a shorter span of time. Leopard says this allows them to take an even more proactive approach. “If you can spend time doing more analysis, you can catch more things that could be suspect,” says Leopard.

Echoing the need for greater efficiency, Moody says that WinPlot was a logical progression in data analysis. “The world has been going to a desktop, Windows-based environment and that’s where this software needed to be.”

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Find out about CSC's work in the aerospace & defense industry.

Read more about the Program Information Systems Mission Services (PrISMS) contract, under which WinPlot software was created.