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# Re: [femm] FEMM "batch processing"

- To: <femm@yahoogroups.com>
- Subject: Re: [femm] FEMM "batch processing"
- From: "Graham Gunderson" <g_jlnlabs@hotmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 18:52:15 -0700
- References: <75.13bb440f.2818cc5f@aol.com>

Hi Dave and all, Since I "discovered" FEMM, I've recommendedit to hundreds of people on email lists, who are interested in working with magnetics. I've received about a dozen "thank yous" in my personal inbox - many people needed this software badly and just weren't aware it exists. None of them are programmers, or Mathematica users... much less junkies :) They approach from a curious, rather than technical, angle. (In my opinion - from the perspective of an "inventor" - I think that these different approaches are equally valid when discovering or creating something new.) Anyhow, for at least my own sake, I don't think a batch scheme that required knowledge outside the FEMM learning curve would be widely useful - just as you (Dave M.) said. Personally, I'd rather see a restricted setof batch run options that is too simple, instead of something wildly flexible that is too complex. People with good ideas don't always know math or programming languages. Sometimes you will find yourself a brilliant bumpkin, and I think he (she, whoever - as a creative, but unschooled John Doe) should have access to this stuff. When using the FEMM editor, I can press buttons that invoke fkern and femmview, from *within* femme. Femme acts much like a shell that calls the fkern number cruncher and femmview display programs - it appears to simply launch them and point to the data to process. I have assumed that batch processing can be implemented with similar ease, by writing another application that calls femme, much like femme calls fkern, for instance. It is just a shift in hierarchy, where femme (representing a single model under analysis) is no longer the trunk of the analytical "tree" but one of any number of its branches. It may require a minor restructuring of femme, so it can run as an engine as well as a GUI. In all, it seems that if I had the skills to write a program like FEMM from scratch, that this kind of functionality could be included from the outset, without necessitating any breakthroughs. If batch processing is difficult to implement now, after the software has been refined, perhaps it is worthwhile to explore modularization of the code - or something else that makes the engine you have already built still work in discrete pieces that can be rearranged, and called as routines from a batch processor. The batch GUI could be much like femme, but in frames. I certainly don't expect anyone to take on this chore... but through beginner's eyes, I can't see much inherently in the way of implementing the batch processing with a simple, intuitive approach. Since this is not an inherent limitation, there is a solution. It can be done in a straightforward manner, I think, all we are lacking is a method of approach. Graham ----- Original Message ----- From: dcm3c@aol.com To: femm@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 5:57 PM Subject: Re: [femm] FEMM "batch processing" In a message dated 4/24/01 3:05:27 PM Eastern Daylight Time, frank.e.lenning@boeing.com writes: Is there a way to "batch process" multiple frequencies in FEMM? I've been doing simple lightning (F domain) current distribution problems in FEMM but I have to laboriously increment through the frequencies to build a broadband result. (BTW, it works great!) I am interested in getting some quantity (say integral of Ht around a loop) as a function of frequency. Any help? I suppose it is possible to do by modifying the code but that sounds painful with no prior experience with this code and limited C++ programming experience. I'm glad that the program is proving to be useful to you. Unfortunately, there currently isn't an easy way to do batch processing of this type. I've been threatening to try to implement some sort of scripting for a while, but I still haven't decided infinitenergy@hotmail.com writes: Isn't it possible to invent a "shell" for FEMM, which will iteratively run fkern, each time after changing some variable(s) inthe model? Then, the changing parameters could be selected from a list of all properties (frequency, materials, magnetization direction, point coordinates, you name it) and the progression of values given either by a list (100, 200, 300...) or a parsed formula (i.e., x = x + 100). This is one suggestion out of many ways it can be done. I wouldn't want to make the batch run options too restrictive. I've been thinking about trying use some existing scripting language to implement batch run capabilities (Python?). One problem is that I haven't really learned how to code in any scripting languages yet--oh, well. Maybe it would be better to try to tie it into a program like Scilab (sort of like Matlab, but without the cost), because of the built-in plotting and matrix manipulation abilities. I'ma Mathematica junkie, so it might be useful to get the femm to talk to Mathematica through mathlink or something. However, probably most of the femm users out there aren't also Mathematica users, so this might not be generally that useful. Hang had suggested to me that it would be good to convert the routines into a library that can be calledfrom other programs. This would probably be the easiest way to go, would allow some pretty elaborate scripting, and probably be pretty useful to me. However, when it comes right down to it, I'm not sure that there are that many user out there who know C++ well enough to take take advantage of something like that. Any more suggestions? Dave Meeker -- http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/dcm3c `Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.`

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  - Re: [femm] FEMM "batch processing"
    - From: dcm3c@aol.com

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