Executing an Analysis - hkroeger/insightcae GitHub Wiki

Using the Workbench

Automated analysis tasks need parameters from the user. To edit the parameters in a comfortable way, InsightCAE provides a tool called "workbench".

A new analysis is started by selecting "Analysis > New..." from the menu or by pressing Ctrl+N.

Select the analysis module which you want to use. The analyses are grouped in categories present the list clearly.

Once an analysis is selected and confirmed by "Ok", the parameter editor appears. The parameters are grouped in the tree widget on the left and initialized with their default values. If a parameter is selected, some documentation for this parameter will be displayed in the frame right from the parameter list. Below the documentation area, the control elements for editing the parameters are grouped. If parameter data has been entered, it can be set by clicking on "Apply".

Once all parameters are set properly, the configuration can be saved by "Save parameters...". It is also possible to merge a parameter set from a file into the currently opened set. Select the "Merge parameters..." button for this purpose. The parameter set which shall be merged does not need to be from the same analysis type as the currently opened one. Only parameters which exist also in the current set are overwritten. Parameters which do not match are ignored during merging.

By clicking on "Run", the analysis is started. In the shown example, this includes meshing, solving and postprocessing. After starting the run, the workbench switches to the "Run" tab.

This tab shows a progress plot during the solution. The plot displays e.g. the residuals of the solver or other quantities like forces or coefficients. For some simple analyses it might also be possible that no quantities are visualised.

Furthermore, below the chart, the standard output of the running subprocesses is displayed. This log can be saved to a file by clicking on the "Save..." button or sent directly via email by clicking the "Email..." button.

If the output reveals problems or shall be cancelled for any other reason, this can be archieved clicking on the "Kill" button.

After the analysis run has finished, the computed result elements are loaded and displayed on the output tab.

The results can now be inspected. Above the element list, there is a button for creating a report from the result elements ("Create Report..."). The report contains the input parameters together with all elements from the result preview in a high resolution PDF file. In the following, two excerpts are shown. The report is created through the LaTeX typeset system. By default, a plain LaTeX template is used. A different template can be selected by setting the environment variable INSIGHT_REPORT_TEMPLATE to a customized template report.

Executing Analyses from the Command Line

The parameter file, which can be saved from within the workbench is a plain text, XML-formatted file. It can be edited with any text editor. Instead of running the analysis from within the workbench, it is also possible to execute it through a command line tool from the command line or from a shell script. The command for this is "analyze" which understands a number of command line options:

user@localhost:~$ analyze --help
Allowed options:
  --help                  produce help message
  -x [ --skiplatex ]      skip execution of pdflatex
  -w [ --workdir ] arg    execution directory
  -c [ --savecfg ] arg    save final configuration (including command line 
                          overrides) to this file
  -b [ --bool ] arg       boolean variable assignment
  -l [ --selection ] arg  selection variable assignment
  -s [ --string ] arg     string variable assignment
  -p [ --path ] arg       path variable assignment
  -d [ --double ] arg     double variable assignment
  -v [ --vector ] arg     vector variable assignment
  -i [ --int ] arg        int variable assignment
  -m [ --merge ] arg      additional input file to merge into analysis 
                          parameters before variable assignments
  --libs arg              Additional libraries with analysis modules to load
  -f [ --input-file ] arg Specifies input file.

Especially useful for scripted usage are the options to modify parameters. If the parameters from the example above were saved to a file "airfoil.ist", the analysis for a different angle of attack, of lets say 5deg, would be executed by:

$ analyze --double geometry/alpha:5 airfoil.ist 

After the analysis finishes, the latex compiler is automatically run and the PDF is created.