Batch processing: Automating script generation

The OrcaFlex spreadsheet has facilities for automating the generation of a script file for a regular set of cases. To use this facility select the pre-processing worksheet, then select the script table cell and then click the create batch scripts command which can be found on the OrcaFlex tab of the Excel ribbon.

The batch script filename is specified in the cell next to the script table cell. It is relative to the directory containing this spreadsheet, so if you do not specify the folder name then it will be created in the folder containing this spreadsheet.

Below the script table cell is a table defining the script, consisting of 3 sections:

First is one or more title rows (shown with a green background in the example below). Only the first table column is used in these rows, and the contents of those cells are simply copied to the script. The other columns are ignored. The title rows can therefore contain any comments or other script commands that you want to appear at the start of the script. The title rows end at the first row with a blank cell in the table's first column.
Next is a series of header rows for the cases (shown with a blue background in the example below). The last header row is deemed to be the next row with a comment command (i.e. starting with "//") in the first column.
Finally there are a series of rows, one row for each case. The cells in this section are processed from left to right on each row, and then down to the next row, and each cell generates script commands as follows. If the cell is empty then no script commands are generated. But if the cell is not empty then all the (non-empty) script commands in the header rows in that column are written to the script, with the cell's value appended to the last header row command. This allows different columns to set data values for the various cases, and a blank value leaves the data item as it was in the previous case. The cases (and the whole table) end at the next row that has a blank cell in the table's first column.
Note that you can add extra columns to the table or indeed remove columns from the table.
The table can be arranged with rows and columns transposed. To do this you must use the keyword script table row. An example of this alternative approach can be found in the default OrcaFlex spreadsheet template.

An example is shown below:

Figure:

Example table for automatic batch script generation

The script generated by this table loads a base case from a file named Base Case.dat. Because no path is specified then this file is located in the same directory as the spreadsheet. Four cases are produced based on this data file with current values of 0.5 and 0.8 and line lengths of 100 and 120.

Notes:	The cell containing the base case data file name has the file name surrounded by quotes. This is because the file name contains a space. However, the quotes are not needed for the file names in the last column because they do not contain spaces.
	The generated script adheres to the formatting specified in the Excel cells. So, if a cell is formatted to have, say, 1 decimal place, the corresponding value in the script will also have 1 decimal place.

The script is generated as follows. First select the cell containing the text script table. Then click the create batch scripts command which can be found on the OrcaFlex tab of the Excel ribbon. When you do this you are presented with the following window:

Figure:

Automatically generated batch script

The script file has not been saved yet. You should check that the automatically generated script is as intended. Should you wish to, you can modify the script file name at this point.

If there is a problem with the script you can click the close button and correct the script table.

Save button

Saves the script file.

Save and run button

Saves the script file and then processes it.

If the script has any run commands then OrcaFlex is loaded and the script is processed by the standard OrcaFlex batch form. Otherwise the script is processed from within Excel – progress is reported on the Excel status bar.

Save, run and submit button

Saves the script file and then processes it within Excel. Each data file saved by the script is then submitted to Distributed OrcaFlex which runs and saves the simulation file.

Note:

The save, run and submit button is only available if Distributed OrcaFlex is installed on your machine. In addition, it cannot be used if the script contains any run commands.

Multiple tables

You can have multiple script tables within a workbook. To create all the batch scripts in one operation select all the script tables and then click create batch scripts in the OrcaFlex tab of the Excel ribbon.