Fatigue analysis: Commands

File menu

New

Clears previously entered data and resets all values to their defaults.

Open

Opens a fatigue analysis file. These files can be either binary (.ftg) or text (.yml).

• The .ftg extension is used for binary format files. These may contain both data and results: if the file does contain results, they are available without having to perform the calculation all again.
• The .yml extension is used for the text file format. These are YAML files and are intended to be used for automation purposes. They may contain only data, and not any results.

Just as is the case for OrcaFlex data files, the binary file has strong version compatibility features: when an early version of OrcaFlex attempts to open a binary .ftg file written by a later version, for instance, it is able to report informative compatibility warnings. It is not able to be as helpful and informative when working with text data files across program versions. Whilst we strive to achieve as much compatibility as possible for text data files across program versions, we cannot achieve the same level of compatibility as that for binary data files. The convert text data files tool can be used to resolve issues with text data file compatibility.

Save

Saves the data to the currently selected file name (shown in the title bar of the window).

• If results have been calculated then these are also saved to the file. This allows you to view results at a later date without having to perform the calculation again. Note that results can only be saved to the binary format file (.ftg).
• If results have not been calculated then the file will contain input data only.

Save as

This is the same as save, but allows you to specify the file name to save to.

Open data

If the .ftg file contains results for a large number of load cases, then it can take a long time to load. If you want to work with just the input data and don't need the results, use this command: loading the input data without the results is much quicker than loading the whole file in such cases.

Open containing folder

Opens a file explorer window and selects the current file.

Properties

Displays the system file properties dialog for the current file. This is mainly intended to make it easier to find the full path for files with long names.

Most recent files list

A list of the most recently used files. Selecting an item on the list causes the file to be loaded.

Analysis menu

Estimate calculation time

Gives an estimate of how long it will take to carry out the fatigue analysis and present the results. This can be particularly useful for long analyses, e.g. rainflow analyses involving a lot of cases or long simulations.

Check

The check command performs a preliminary check of the fatigue analysis data. For example, it will confirm that all the specified load case simulation files exist and that, for each load case, the named line and the specified arc length intervals exist.

Checking is generally much quicker that the fatigue analysis itself, so we recommend that you do a check before you run a fatigue analysis. The check can often detect data errors that would otherwise only be found part way through what may be quite a long fatigue analysis. It is particularly important to check any new fatigue analysis, or when significant changes have been made to existing data.

Calculate

The calculate command starts the fatigue analysis. When the calculation is complete the results are displayed. Different results presentation are offered for damage based methods and histogram collation. If you have loaded a .ftg file containing results, and not changed any of the analysis data afterwards, the results will be loaded directly without being recalculated unnecessarily.