Failure of Elmer Gui

[wjpowers]

It seems that quite a few people have examined my query and request, but that none have anything helpful to reply.
I take this to mean that there is little help in this regard.

Failing, then, to find sensible help in using Elmer Gui, I am willing and prepared to abandon it.
For the most part what the Elmer Gui does is to set up the input file.
If the Gui is not going to be adequate to do this (at least not my version), then I'm ready to abandon it.

Still I need some documentation that explains all the syntax and grammar of the input file.
I know this is a step backward, but it makes sense to try it.

I am assuming that, although the Gui is changing rapidly, the format of the input file has remained somewhat constant.
If this is true, it means that I only need to learn the appropriate input file commands and type them in manually.

Can anyone recommend user documentation that would enable me to do this?

Thank you for any assistance.

Bill Powers
White, SD USA

[raback]

Hi

Whether to use ElmerGUI depends alot on the number of bodies and boundaries. If you have an "academic" case it often makes sense to abandon the ElmerGUI quite quickly and just manually implement the changes to the .sif file. Also copy-pasting solver sections from existing .sif files such as those found under Elmer6.0/tests is often handy.

No to start without the GUI there are some documented non-GUI tutorials. The library features of Elmer are best documented in Solver manual while the dll-solvers (most of the physics) are explained in the Models manual.

-Peter

[hazelsct]

Uh, before proclaiming "failure", please have a bit of patience and consideration. This is a volunteer-driven site which charges nothing, and we try to answer when we can, but in my experience Sunday->Monday next-day service is generally not available from FEA companies charging thousands of dollars/euros for licenses, let alone a forum like this. Insulting people who are trying to help you for free is not a good way to "win friends and influence people", so to speak.

Whether you use the GUI is up to you. I find it to be very helpful and intuitive, and a good way to get work done quickly. But it has its limitations, for example, a couple of models are not yet available, and its current design does not make it possible to include more than one field variable in the Advection-Diffusion model.

Please let us know more specifically how you would like to use the GUI, and we'll do our best to help you.

[wjpowers]

Yes, I understand that this is a volunteer effort; and i apologize for my seeming impatience.
I was a code developer and manager of a code about the size of Elmer for many years. So I appreciate the difficulties.
For this reason, i think I know what I'm looking for, but have yet to find it.
I confess to being somewhat confused by the vast array of Elmer tutorials and documentation, much of which seems inconsistent.

I take if that the best advice is to download code and documentation from the repository.

I am unfamiliar with svn, although it looks suspiciously like what I am familiar with: cvs.
So the first thing I have to figure out is how to get a copy of svn.

After that I am worried. I'm worried because I received a compiled version of the code from ubuntu. How old that is I don't know.

It appears that the best thing for me to do is to download the code from the repository, try to compile it (always a problem on different platforms), and start all over again.

The problem I wanted to run was suppose to be a simple one, sort of a rough cut at a more complicated heat transfer problem.

Thank you for your patience and help.

bill powers

[hazelsct]

Hello Bill,

Thanks, I'm glad to hear that we have an experienced code manager as a potential user/bug reporter (and developer?) of Elmer! I hope you find what you're looking for, and come to enjoy Elmer's breadth of features and compact elegant code base that others here have come to love.

If it helps, I wrote the packaging for Debian/Ubuntu, so if you have trouble with the package I can help. The next Ubuntu (Maverick) had its Debian unstable -> Ubuntu universe sync already based on 4458.dfsg-2.1, so that will release with Ubuntu 10.10 this Fall. But the latest Ubuntu package on opennovation.org is based on svn revision 4499, which is about two weeks old, and I update that repository about once a month.

You can build from svn if you need something newer, or if you want to do some development. If you want to build from svn, I suggest looking at the source package by running:

apt-get source elmerfem

Then look in the elmerfem-[version]/debian directory for files which define the package:
[*] control has a list of packages you need to build Elme
[*] rules has the build procedure (in makefile format)
[*] changelog details all of the package changes over time
[*] The patches/ subdirectory includes Debian's patches, some of which are suitable for upstream inclusion and others are very Debian-specific
These should be helpful when you build from SVN.

[I should put the above information in the Wiki...]

-Adam

[wjpowers]

Adam:

I've been down a couple of days. So I just saw your latest post.

It makes sense to me to perhaps remove the ubuntu Elmer that I have and to install the latest Debian package at opennovation.org.

Will the Elmer Debian that I download there also contain ElmerGui and the post processor?

Since these are already compiled versions of Elmer and related products I am concerned that some of the capabilities of Elmer Gui that I find mentioned on the web are not available to me because of my platform:

uname -a
Linux wjp-desktop 2.6.32-22-generic #36-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jun 3 22:02:19 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

Thanks,

bill

[hazelsct]

Hello and apologies for the delay,

The package on opennovation.org is for Ubuntu, and includes just about every single feature available in Elmer -- except elemental partitioning using METIS (it can do nodal partitioning using Scotch's METIS-compatible front end).

-Adam