EnSight command files are useful for restoring the system to a state reached in a previous session. However, restoring a long session dealing with large files can take a long time. Fortunately, EnSight provides an archiving mechanism that saves only the current state of the system, rather than the entire history of a session.

This capability is useful not only for large data files with several active variables, but also for saving a standard starting point for sessions. In the initial session, geometry can be loaded, variables activated, a good viewpoint selected, and an archive written. Subsequent sessions take advantage of this investment by merely loading the archive (which can be done as you start EnSight from the command line).

The client and server each write separate binary files containing the complete current state of the respective processes. Since these files are binary, they can be quickly written and restored. Note that an archive only contains information resident in either client or server memory at the time of the archive. No information is available for variables that were inactive or time steps other than the current. For this reason, you should never remove the original dataset and attempt to use the archive as a substitute (unless you know what you're doing).