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diff --git a/docs/source/usersguide/processing.rst b/docs/source/usersguide/processing.rst
index e7e31c0fc..044b6a2f1 100644
--- a/docs/source/usersguide/processing.rst
+++ b/docs/source/usersguide/processing.rst
@@ -11,12 +11,18 @@ extremely beneficial to do some coding in Python to quickly obtain results.  In
 these cases, and for many of the provided utilities, it is necessary for your
 Python installation to contain:
 
-* `Numpy <http://www.numpy.org/>`_
-* `Scipy <http://www.scipy.org/>`_
-* `Matplotlib <http://matplotlib.org/>`_ (optional for plotting utilities)
-* `Silomesh <https://github.com/nhorelik/silomesh>`_ (optional for plotting
-  utilities)
-* `VTK <http://www.vtk.org/>`_ (optional for plotting utilities)
+* [1]_ `Numpy <http://www.numpy.org/>`_
+* [1]_ `Scipy <http://www.scipy.org/>`_
+* [2]_ `Matplotlib <http://matplotlib.org/>`_
+* [2]_ `Silomesh <https://github.com/nhorelik/silomesh>`_
+* [2]_ `VTK <http://www.vtk.org/>`_
+* [3]_ `PyQt <http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/pyqt>`_
+
+All of these are easily obtainable in Ubuntu.
+
+.. [1] Required for tally data extraction from statepoints with statepoint.py
+.. [2] Optional for plotting utilities
+.. [3] Optional for interactive GUIs
 
 ----------------------
 Geometry Visualization
@@ -29,7 +35,7 @@ running OpenMC with the -plot or -p command-line option (See
 Plotting in 2D
 --------------
 
-.. image:: ../../img/atr.jpg
+.. image:: ../../img/atr.png
    :height: 200px
 
 After running OpenMC to obtain PPM files, images should be saved to another
@@ -61,7 +67,7 @@ voxel.py accomplishes this for SILO:
 
     <openmc_root>/src/utils/voxel.py myplot.voxel -o output.silo
 
-and VTK:
+and VTK file formats:
 
 .. code-block:: sh
 
@@ -78,21 +84,274 @@ or
 Users can process the binary into any other format if desired by following the
 example of voxel.py.  For the binary file structure, see :ref:`devguide_voxel`.
 
+.. note:: 3D voxel plotting can be very computer intensive for the viewing
+          program (Visit, Paraview, etc.) if the number of voxels is large
+          (>10million or so).  Thus if you want an accurate picture that
+          renders smoothly, consider using only one voxel in a certain
+          direction. For instance, the 3D pin lattice figure above was generated
+          with a 500x500x1 voxel mesh, which allows for resolution of the
+          cylinders without wasting too many voxels on the axial dimension.
+
+
 -------------------
 Tally Visualization
 -------------------
 
+Tally results are saved in both a text file (tallies.out) as well as a binary
+statepoint file. While the tallies.out file may be fine for simple tallies, in
+many cases the user requires more information about the tally or the run, or
+has to deal with a large number of result values (e.g. for mesh tallies).  In
+these cases, extracting data from the statepoint file via Python scripting is
+the preferred method of data analysis and visualization.
+
 Data Extraction
 ---------------
 
+A great deal of information is available in statepoint files (See
+:ref:`devguide_statepoint`), most of which is easily extracted by the provided
+utility statepoint.py. This utility provides a Python class to load statepoints
+and extract data - it is used in many of the provided plotting utilities, and
+can be used in user-created scripts to carry out manipulations of the data. To
+read tallies using this utility, make sure statepoint.py is in your PYTHONPATH,
+and then import the class, instantiate it, and call read_results:
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+    from statepoint import StatePoint
+    sp = StatePoint('statepoint.100.binary')
+    sp.read_results()
+
+At this point the user can extract entire scores from tallies into a data
+dictionary containing numpy arrays:
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+    tallyid = 1
+    score = 'flux'
+    data = sp.extract_results(tallyid, score)
+    means = data['means']
+    print data.keys()
+
+The results from this function contain all filter bins (all mesh points, all
+energy groups, etc.), which can be reshaped with the bin ordering also contained
+in the output dictionary. This is the best choice of output for easily
+integrating ranges of data.
+
+Alternatively the user can extract specific values for a single score/filter
+combination:
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+    tallyid = 1
+    score = 'flux'
+    filters = [('mesh', (1, 1, 5)), ('energyin', 0)]
+    value, error = sp.get_value(tallyid, filters, score)
+
+In the future more documentaion may become available here for statepoint.py and
+the data extraction functions of StatePoint objects. However, for now it is up
+to the user to explore the classes in statepoint.py to discover what data is
+available in StatePoint objects (we highly recommend interactively exploring
+with `IPython <http://ipython.org/>`_). Many exmaples can be found by looking
+through the other utilies that use statepoint.py, and a few common tasks will be
+described here in the following sections.
+
 Plotting in 2D
 --------------
 
+.. image:: ../../img/plotmeshtally.png
+   :height: 200px
+
+For simple viewing of 2D slices of a mesh plot, the utility plot_mesh_tally.py
+is provided.  This utility provides an interactive GUI to explore and plot
+mesh tallies for any scores and filter bins.  It requires statepoint.py, as well
+as `PyQt <http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/pyqt>`_.
+
+.. image:: ../../img/fluxplot.png
+   :height: 200px
+
+Alternatively, the user can write their own Python script to manipulate the data
+appropriately. Consider a run where the first tally contains a 105x105x1 mesh
+over a small core, with a flux score and two energyin filter bins. To explicitly
+extract the data and create a plot with gnuplot, the following script can be
+used. The script operates in several steps for clarity, and is not necessarily
+the most efficient way to extract data from large mesh tallies. This creates the
+two heatmaps in the previous figure.
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+    #!/usr/bin/env python
+    
+    import os
+    
+    import statepoint
+    
+    # load and parse the statepoint file
+    sp = statepoint.StatePoint('statepoint.300.binary')
+    sp.read_results()
+    
+    tallyid = 0 # This is tally 1
+    score = 0   # This corresponds to flux (see tally.scores)
+    
+    # get mesh dimensions
+    meshid = sp.tallies[tallyid].filters['mesh'].bins[0]
+    for i,m in enumerate(sp.meshes):
+        if m.id == meshid:
+          mesh = m
+          break
+    nx,ny,nz = mesh.dimension
+
+    # loop through mesh and extract values to python dictionaries
+    thermal = {}
+    fast = {}
+    for x in range(1,nx+1):
+        for y in range(1,ny+1):
+            for z in range(1,nz+1):
+                val,err = sp.get_value(tallyid,
+                                       [('mesh',(x,y,z)),('energyin',0)],
+                                       score)
+                thermal[(x,y,z)] = val
+                val,err = sp.get_value(tallyid,
+                                       [('mesh',(x,y,z)),('energyin',1)],
+                                       score)
+                fast[(x,y,z)] = val
+    
+    # sum up the axial values and write datafile for gnuplot
+    with open('meshdata.dat','w') as fh:
+        for x in range(1,nx+1):
+            for y in range(1,ny+1):
+                thermalval = 0.
+                fastval = 0.
+                for z in range(1,nz+1):
+                  thermalval += thermal[(x,y,z)]
+                  fastval += fast[(x,y,z)]
+                fh.write("{} {} {} {}\n".format(x,y,thermalval,fastval))
+
+    # write gnuplot file
+    with open('tmp.gnuplot','w') as fh:
+      fh.write(r"""set terminal png size 1000 400
+  set output 'fluxplot.png'
+  set nokey
+  set autoscale fix
+  set multiplot layout 1,2 title "Pin Mesh Flux Tally"
+  set title "Thermal"
+  plot 'meshdata.dat' using 1:2:3 with image
+  set title "Fast"
+  plot 'meshdata.dat' using 1:2:4 with image
+  """)
+
+    # make plot
+    os.system("gnuplot < tmp.gnuplot")
+
 Plotting in 3D
 --------------
 
 .. image:: ../../img/3dcore.png
    :height: 200px
 
+As with 3D plots of the geometry, meshtally data needs to be put into a standard
+format for viewing. The utility statepoint_3d.py is provided to accomplish this
+for both VTK and SILO. By default statepoint_3d.py processes a statepoint into a
+3D file with all mesh tallies and filter/score combinations, 
+
+.. code-block:: sh
+
+    <openmc_root>/src/utils/statepoint_3d.py <statepoint_file> -o output.silo
+    <openmc_root>/src/utils/statepoint_3d.py <statepoint_file> --vtk -o output.vtm
+
+but it also provides several command-line options to selectively process only
+certain data arrays in order to keep file sizes down.
+
+.. code-block:: sh
+
+    <openmc_root>/src/utils/statepoint_3d.py <statepoint_file> -tallies 2,4 --scores 4.1,4.3 -o output.silo
+    <openmc_root>/src/utils/statepoint_3d.py <statepoint_file> -filters 2.energyin.1 --vtk -o output.vtm
+
+All available options for specifying a subset of tallies, scores, and filters
+can be listed with the ``--list`` or ``-l`` command line options.
+
+.. note:: Note that while SILO files can contain multiple meshes in one file,
+          VTK needs to use a multi-block dataset, which stores each mesh piece
+          in a different file in a subfolder.  All meshes can be loaded at once
+          with the main VTM file, or each VTI file in the subfolder can be
+          loaded individually. 
+
+Alternatively, the user can write their own Python script to manipulate the data
+appropriately before insertion into a SILO or VTK file.  For instance, if the
+data has been extracted as was done in the 2D plotting example script above, a
+SILO file can be created with:
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+    import silomesh as sm
+    sm.init_silo("fluxtally.silo")
+    sm.init_mesh('tally_mesh',*mesh.dimension, *mesh.lower_left, *mesh.width)
+    sm.init_var('flux_tally_thermal')
+    for x in range(1,nx+1):
+      for y in range(1,ny+1):
+          for z in range(1,nz+1):
+            sm.set_value(float(thermal[(x,y,z)]),x,y,z)
+    sm.finalize_var()
+    sm.init_var('flux_tally_fast')
+    for x in range(1,nx+1):
+      for y in range(1,ny+1):
+          for z in range(1,nz+1):
+              sm.set_value(float(fast[(x,y,z)]),x,y,z)
+    sm.finalize_var()
+    sm.finalize_mesh()
+    sm.finalize_silo()
+
+and the equivalent VTK file with:
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+    import vtk
+
+    grid = vtk.vtkImageData()
+    grid.SetDimensions(nx+1,ny+1,nz+1)
+    grid.SetOrigin(*mesh.lower_left)
+    grid.SetSpacing(*mesh.width)
+
+    # vtk cell arrays have x on the inners, so we need to reorder the data    
+    idata = {}
+    for x in range(nx):
+      for y in range(ny):
+        for z in range(nz):
+          i = z*nx*ny + y*nx + x
+          idata[i] = (x,y,z)
+
+    vtkfastdata = vtk.vtkDoubleArray()
+    vtkfastdata.SetName("fast")
+    for i in range(nx*ny*nz):
+      vtkfastdata.InsertNextValue(fast[idata[i]])
+
+    vtkthermaldata = vtk.vtkDoubleArray()
+    vtkthermaldata.SetName("thermal")
+    for i in range(nx*ny*nz):
+      vtkthermaldata.InsertNextValue(thermal[idata[i]])
+
+    grid.GetCellData().AddArray(vtkfastdata)
+    grid.GetCellData().AddArray(vtkthermaldata)
+    
+    writer = vtk.vtkXMLImageDataWriter()
+    writer.SetInput(grid)
+    writer.SetFileName('tally.vti')
+    writer.Write()
+
 Getting Data into MATLAB
 ------------------------
+
+There is currently no front-end utility to dump tally data to MATLAB files, but
+the process is straightforward. First extract the data using a custom Python
+script with statepoint.py, put the data into appropriately-shaped numpy arrays,
+and then use the `Scipy MATLAB IO routines
+<http://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/tutorial/io.html>`_ to save to a MAT
+file. Note that the data contained in the output from
+``StatePoint.extract_result`` is already in a Numpy array that can be reshaped
+and dumped to MATLAB in one step.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+