Command Line Options¶
Command line documentation can be retrieved with the help flag.
$ intact --help
The help documentation bundled with the tool is definitive, the most important options are covered here in more detail.
-s, --scenario <path/to/scenario.json>¶
When not calling either --help or --build-info, this option is mandatory for all calls. The tool needs a path for the scenario json file to use.
-o, --output <path/to/output_dir>¶
The tool generates a variety of output files. By default, these files will be put in the same directory as the scenario json file. Use this flag to change the directory where output files will be placed. The scenario json file, and any geometry files referenced, will be copied over to the output directory.
--refinement-level <ratio>¶
Surface and Volume mesh geometry can be refined prior to sampling. This can be a good idea if the triangle quality is poor: large triangles may not properly resolve and interpolate detail in the solution. Refining the mesh means that the ratio of element edge length to bounding box size will not exceed the refinement level provided by this option.
--build-info¶
This flag can be used to get detailed information about the version of the tool. Attaching this information to any bug reports will help with debugging.
Specifying Boundary Conditions¶
Specifying boundary conditions for Intact.Simulation is a bit different than other FEA systems. Because Intact’s technology is based on the use of a non-conforming mesh, boundary conditions are not specified directly on a finite element mesh. This also means that Intact does not support non-real boundary conditions like point and edge constraints / forces / moments.
Instead, boundary conditions in Intact are specified as triangle mesh based surfaces. These can be either *.ply or *.stl files. Specific semantics of what each boundary conditions does are specified in the section for each physics, however all boundary conditions will need to specify a surface.
Some things to keep in mind with these surfaces.
Having multiple disconnected components in one mesh will not cause a runtime error but may not yield high quality results. It is best to create a separate boundary condition instance in the json configuration for each fully connected component.
It is possible to specify a boundary condition that is disconnected from the geometry. This can result in a runtime warning, but is not an error. Note in cases where a force / quantity is distributed over the boundary condition surface this will result in some of the quantity not being accounted for since there is nothing to apply it to.