Re: Batch processing / interfacing

[frank.e.lenning@xxxxxxxxxx]

--- In femm@xxxx, David Meeker <dmeeker@xxxx> wrote:
> 
This is fantastic. I now have a batch processor working thanks to 
Dave's open source policy. I wrote it in VBA and it took me about 12 
hours or so to get it fully functional. All the program does to get 
out currents in a block as a function of frequency is:

1) read in .fem file created using Dave's GUI. You must run the 
modfel once so you can use it "standalone" later.
2) edit the file to change the frequency - I do this using Word 
inside VBA.
3) launch FKERN using VB's Shell command. I haven't figured out yet 
how to detect if fkn is done so I have a timer that waits for a 
certain number of seconds before proceeding.
4) read in the .ans file - I had to study this for a while to figure 
out the format but, again thanks to Dave's human readable file 
approach, that didn't take too long. I do the reading using Excel 
within VBA.
5) calculate block currents - this is where the open source really 
came in handy - I just studied Dave's femmeview cpp files long enough 
to figure out how he was calculating currents and duplicated it in 
VBA.
6) write the currents to another file.
7) loop back to step 1

This would all be alot easier I think with DDE. I just wanted to 
give Dave a feel of how one user was attempting to batch process. 
Since the runs I do tend to be ~1/2 hour or so, the programming time 
was acceptable. 

Although I really don't know much about it, I think DDE would keep 
versatility which I think is important in this case. I believe the 
GUI should be kept simple and user friendly, at least until we really 
figure out the sort of "looping" functionality is useable by enough 
users to justify programming it into the GUI. I think most of the 
people wanting to do batch processing are "power users" anyways who 
aren't completely scared aware by a little programming.

I'll post my little batch processor once I'm a little more proud of 
it in case anyone is interested.