Where to start?

[johnjaypl]

Hello,

I'm a new Elmer user. I would like to start with a simple problem- modal analysis of a plate.

I managed to create a plate mesh with GMSH, the plate opens fine in Elmer GUI.

Now what?

Is there a step by step tutorial of how to navigate the Elmer GUI to run a modal analysis on a plate?
It's not at all obvious to me and the documentation hasn't really helped.

Even though things aren't set up correctly I run the solver and get.

ERROR:: ElmerSolver: Unable to find ELMERSOLVER_STARTINFO, can not execute.

I think it's an indication of what point I'm at.

Thanks,

John

[johnjaypl]

Ok, I found what seems to be a great tutorial that gives examples of how to pilot the GUI.

I tried tutorial 2 - a linear elastic beam problem.

I follow the steps but when I try to solve the model I get the following error.

At line 1295 of file ModelDescription.f90
Fortran runtime error: Bad real number in item 1 of list input

Does anyone have any idea what this means?

One thing I notice in the setup menu. The include path is blank. Is this a problem?

John

[johnjaypl]

Ok, I got a bit further. I actually got resuts. Not the right resuts but it's progress.

One problem I have which is very specific and should be easy to answer is that the tutorial says to set:

Model
Equation
Name = Elasticity
Apply to Bodies = Body 1
Linear elasticity
Active = on
Calculate Stresses = on
Edit Solver Setting
Linear System
Method = Iterative / GCR
Preconditioning = ILU1
Nonlinear system
Max. iterations = 1
Apply
Add
OK

My problem is with the line

Method = Iterative / GCR

I don't see GCR as a choice.

The choices are:

BiCGStab
TFQMR
CGS
CG
GMRES

What's us with that?

John

[raback]

Sorry, your exe is older than the tutorial. You can find a fresh Windows exe at the same location that you found this fresh tutorial. We'll update the exe and manuals also to sourceforge in near future.

-Peter