Command line

The flags for setting up, running and reporting a case, verified against the source.

The application dispatches more flags than are listed here. The rest drive test fixtures and diagnostics, and are named — without being explained one by one — under Test and harness flags at the end, so that a flag seen in a script can be identified. Anything on neither list is not a flag.

The application is a windowed program and stays one on the command line. Several flags do their work and then exit; none of them run headless, because the report figures and the saved images are frames of the real viewport.

shd-simcfd-app.exe [flags] [geometry file]

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How arguments are read

Five things decide what a command line actually does.

1. Arguments are processed in the order given. --analysis=Cavitation --bc=inlet:Velocity+inlet is not the same as the reverse.
2. --dump-case exits as soon as it is reached. Put it last, or the flags after it never run.
3. A value cannot contain a space — the shell splits the argument first. A + stands in for a space in the value of --bc, --turbulence, --doc, --mesh-op, --set, --set-bc, --set-concept, --set-region, --init-region, --primitive, --add-primitive, --view-item, --adjoint, --molecular and --rotor-part.
4. --add-concept= is the exception. Its category is taken verbatim, so --add-concept=Rotating+zones fails where --set-concept=Rotating+zone+1.rpm=95 works. Quote it instead: --add-concept="Rotating zones".
5. Unrecognised flags are ignored, silently. There is no usage message.

--report, --save-image, --comparison-report and --measure are deferred until after every other argument has been applied, so a report of a case whose analysis or results were set by a later flag still sees them.

The positional argument

The first argument that is not a flag and is a readable file is imported as geometry. It is tested for being a real file rather than merely not starting with a dash, so a two-word Qt option — -platform offscreen, -style … — cannot consume the slot with its own value.

This is what makes the application a shell "Open with" target.

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Workspace and case

Anything that creates cases should pass --workspace as well, or it writes them into the real library. SIMCFD_WORKSPACE in the environment does the same job for a whole shell session; where both are given, the flag wins.

Worked example ids:

An unrecognised id falls back to hull, silently. An example that already exists in the workspace is opened rather than recreated.

--sweep accepts only values that parse as numbers; anything else in the list is dropped. A key beginning incidence has its values suffixed " deg" in the study names.

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Setup

Analysis type names are the ones on the Models pane, listed in Analysis types and solvers. Boundary condition kinds are in Boundary condition types — write a space as +, so --bc=inlet:Velocity+inlet. Turbulence model names are the "Shown as" column of Turbulence and viscosity models, so --turbulence=LRR+(RSM); an unrecognised name falls back to k-omega SST rather than failing.

--set=<property>=<value>

Sets one case property by name, the way the pane that owns it would. It exists for scripted studies: a parameter sweep, a mesh-refinement series, or a validation case that has to run at a stated Reynolds number.

shd-simcfd-app.exe --solver=boundaryFoam ^
                   --set=referenceVelocity=2.1452 ^
                   --set=channelCells=400 ^
                   --set=endIteration=192000 ^
                   --dump-case=D:\case

Three things to know about it:

• The value is converted to the property's own type. A number stays a number; true, 1 and yes are all true for a switch. A space is written as +, as elsewhere.
• Order matters, as it does for every flag. Put it after --solver= or --analysis=, whose constraints overwrite what they must, and before --dump-case=, --mesh or --run.
• It reports what the property became, not what you asked for, so a property that declines an assignment cannot be mistaken for one that took it. An unknown name, a non-numeric value for a numeric property, a malformed argument and a derived read-only property are each reported as an error, by name, and the remaining arguments still run.

Derived quantities cannot be set — reynolds is computed from the velocity, the length and the viscosity, so set those instead.

This is not --sweep=. That clones one simulation per value and leaves the open one untouched, which is what a coefficient curve wants; this changes the open case.

--view=<mode>

Two independent settings, not one list. The render mode is Surfaces, Wireframe, SurfacesWithEdges or TranslucentWithEdges; the section is Clip or Slice. They compose, so --view=Wireframe --view=Clip gives a clipped wireframe rather than resetting the render mode.

The old spellings still work as aliases, and two of them no longer mean what they say: Surface is Surfaces, Mesh is SurfacesWithEdges, and Points is Wireframe — there is no points render any more. An unrecognised name is logged and ignored.

Advanced concept categories: Rotating zones, Body motion, Porous media, Momentum sources, Heat sources, Stabilisation.

Mesh operation kinds — fifteen: renumberMesh, transformPoints, mirrorMesh, refineMesh, extrudeMesh, createPatch, subsetMesh, mergeMeshes, stitchMesh, polyDualMesh, collapseEdges, combinePatchFaces, rotateMesh, zipUpMesh, autoPatch.

--end is an upper bound on the work, not an exact step count. A steady case gets endIteration; a transient one gets n × deltaT as its end time, and with an adjusting time step the step grows as the run settles.

--import-mesh splits on the last colon, and only when it is past position two, so a Windows drive letter is not mistaken for a separator. The tail must parse as a positive number or it is treated as part of the path.

--mesh-op values that parse as numbers are passed as numbers; everything else is passed as a string with + replaced by a space.

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Results

Result-control kinds — twenty-seven: forceCoeffs, forces, probes, cuttingPlane, patchData, volumeData, fieldMinMax, yPlus, wallShearStress, wallHeatFlux, binnedForces, flowRate, fieldAverage, runTimeControl, cloudInfo, interfaceHeight, vortexQ, totalPressureLoss, mixingVariance, mudlineHeight, velocityHistogram, meanAge, totalPressure, pressureCoeff, comfort, turbulenceFields, aeroacoustics.

--measure waits for the results to become readable — up to 20 seconds — before it resolves the patch names, because results load on a worker. --view-set and --view-item are deferred for the same reason, and the items are applied in the order given, since an item can only be edited once the set that creates it has been built.

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Running

--pipeline prints a single PIPELINE … line to standard error carrying the case, analysis type, solver, family, mesh result, cell count, non-orthogonality, run result, outcome, error and warning counts, time and field counts, and the monitor count. The outcome is complete, mesh-failed, or timeout-<phase>.

The exit code agrees with the line. --pipeline exits 1 when the run failed or diverged, and when the case recorded an error of its own — a run that ends converged with a broken function object is still a failure. Warnings are not counted. A mesh that never produced a solver run is not separated by exit code; bundle= and real= in the line separate "no OpenFOAM installed" from "the solver ran and failed".

It also exits 1 without meshing or solving if any scripted edit earlier on the command line was declined — a --set= of a property that does not exist, a --set-region= of a region the case does not have. It prints pipeline: N scripted edit(s) were declined … and stops, because a solve on the wrong case is minutes spent to be misled. --dump-case= and --script= carry the same guard: --dump-case= still writes the case, and still exits 1.

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Scripting

--script= is the designed replacement for the flags around it: a script can loop, branch, read a result and decide, where a flag does one edit in the order it was typed. Everything before it on the command line has already run, and anything after it runs before the script's first yield resumes — so put it last.

--record= is the macro recorder from the command line; the interface has it as Model > Record macro.

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Reports and images

All three exit with 1 on failure. --doc replaces + with a space in the value and silently ignores a field name the report does not have.

These need a real window — the figures are frames of the viewport — so a scripted report run is a normal windowed run that quits when it is done.

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Licensing

--licence-status waits about six seconds before reporting, because the interesting answer is the server's and it has not arrived at the moment the arguments are parsed.

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Examples

Dump the dictionaries for one analysis type without meshing or running:

shd-simcfd-app.exe --workspace=D:/scratch --analysis=Cavitation --dump-case=D:/scratch/cav

Build a 2-D case from nothing and run it:

shd-simcfd-app.exe --workspace=D:/scratch --two-d=z ^
  --bc=inlet:Velocity+inlet --bc=outlet:Pressure+outlet ^
  --end=200 --pipeline

Sweep incidence on the open case and write the comparison report:

shd-simcfd-app.exe --example --sweep=incidenceAlpha:-4,0,4 ^
  --comparison-report=D:/reports/sweep.pdf

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Test and harness flags

These exist so that a path which is otherwise reachable only by clicking can be driven from a script and checked. They are listed so a flag met in somebody's script can be identified; they are not a supported way to set up a case, and several of them build a fixed fixture rather than acting on the open one.

Family run harnesses. Each takes a solid file, applies a built-in fixture setup for that analysis, meshes, solves, prints a summary and exits. They need the relevant backend installed, and report which component is missing when it is not.

--structural= --nonlinear= --modal= --buckling= --harmonic= --transient= --fatigue= --shell= --beam= --thermal= --radiation= --elmer= --cloud-elmer= --em= --em-electrostatic= --eddy= --magnetostatic= --electro-thermal= --acoustic= --acoustic-thermoviscous= --acoustic-radiation= --vibro-acoustic= --explicit-drop= --explicit-impact= --shape-sensitivity= --shape-optimise=

Dumps, printouts and diagnostics.

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The geometry translator

shd-simcfd-translator is a separate executable and takes its own arguments. It is normally invoked by the application, not by hand.

shd-simcfd-translator --input a.step --output a.stl --units mm --heal

It exits 2 on a bad argument list, an unreadable file, or an extension it does not handle. Unrecognised arguments are an error here, unlike in the application.