Re: [femm] Batch processing / interfacing

[Peter Omand Rasmussen <por@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi All
It seems that I have to tell a little story about the send key command
which may interest you. Some years ago I wanted to make a graphical user
interface for a specific mirco-processor where I had done all the
development in DOS with simple text-menus where I could set different
control parameters for the micro-processor. 
Due to the fact that I had some Pascal knowledge and Delphi was very simple
to make a graphical user interface in I believed that I could make an
simple shell for the old DOS- program with text-menus. 
I searched a little on the net and found the send keys component (there is
a similar function in Visual Basic.. Frank) at
http://www.mjtnet.com/index.mv?sendkeys.html.
With this component is it actually very simple to take control over another
application (if the application allows it .......femm did not cooperate
much) and make a shell around it. 

Dave is right in calling the send key a kind of DDE. I was actually
thinking about sending the result from the post-processor via the clipboard
(by files or a command line, and hoping that Dave made the modification). I
hope that I did not warn too much about DDE, because the only reason why I
warned about it was an egoist thought. I don't have any programming
experience with DDE and it would be quite funny if all the other users had !. 

I don't think the problem with DDE may be very large. If Dave makes the DDE
interfacing in femm it may be a smaller job for us users to figure out how
the DDE is working in our favourite program (Matlab, Delphi, C++ Builder,
Visual C, Fortran etc...) and we also have this user group to help each
other. 

It seems that Dave has though much about it and ended up with the
conclusion that DDE is the way to go. If he believes that DDE is it, DDE it
is. Dave is familiar with all the structure of the program, and I would be
lying if I said femm looks like crap.

Femm will have a new dimension with interfacing and it may be better suited
to the different problems/applications the users are studying. The users
can simply continue to automate the solution of the problems/applications
and will not be stopped by the natural limitations in femm. Femm is now
much like a "matrix calculator" where you need to manually put in the
numbers before the matrix calculator will manipulate them. But due to the
nature of femm (simple and free) it is the matrix manipulator for the people.

I think it will be a good idea if users can give suggestions as to how to
they might like the DDE to function (ups I all-ready thought that Dave have
started the DDE... Will you do it ?). 

First of all it seems (from Dave's words) that there are limitations that
preprocessing can't be performed by DDE i.e sending drawing commands like
arc, line etc. Because it would be quite nice if you make an automatic
parametric study of a geometry i.e the thickness of a magnet, length of a
teeth etc. 
Maybe writing a *.fem file from the users own application can solve it or
would it be too difficult to set-up materials and groups if only a dxf file
was input ?.

I am a little confused by the group definition in Daves future look on
DDE-femm. In order to define materials I need a block. But if the block is
in a group will it then be possible to change properties i.e current,
materials ? 

I can easily live with only getting the results from an block-integral in
the post-processor, but I can also imagine that people will be interested
to get Normal flux-density along a line etc.....

Hmmmmm back again in the send key command... I think it could be funny and
easy to try making more hot-keys and a virtual mouse i.e a command line
telling a position for the mouse in the geometry coordinates and a left and
right click. Maybe not an elegant way to make the interfacing but it may be
quite simple........

In fact it is quite difficult to give suggestion because I don't know the
code and how the program is structured. Maybe the users should tell a
little bit more about the problems and what they need. Maybe the need only
is a beautiful animation in avi-files ?!!!

At the last part even as Dave is describing himself as a terrible salesman,
I believe that each user might consider send him a $10 donation. If just a
fraction of visitors of Daves home-page or femm users did that there would
be tangible appreciation for a job well done and good motivation for Dave
to keep up the good work and keep femm in a good shape. 

Peter