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Introduction: Running OrcaWave |
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Introduction: Running OrcaWave |
A shortcut to run OrcaWave is set up on the Start menu when you install OrcaWave (see Start\Programs\Orcina\ or the All Apps screen, Orcina group, depending on your version of Windows).
This shortcut passes no parameters to OrcaWave, so it gives the default start-up behaviour (see below). If this is not suitable, you can configure the start-up behaviour using command-line parameters, for example by setting up your own shortcuts with particular parameter settings.
When you run OrcaWave it looks for an Orcina dongle from which it can claim an OrcaWave licence. By default, it first looks for a licence on a local dongle (i.e. one in local mode and connected to the local machine) and, if none is found, then it looks for a licence on a network dongle (i.e. one in network mode and accessed via a licence manager over the network). This default behaviour can be changed by the /LocalDongle and /NetworkDongle switches described below.
OrcaWave can accept various parameters on the command line to modify the way it starts up. The syntax is:
OrcaWave.exe Filename Option1 Option2 … etc.
Filename is optional. If present, it should be the name of an OrcaWave data file (.owd or .yml) or results file (.owr). After starting up, OrcaWave will automatically open that file.
Option1, Option2 etc. are optional parameters that allow you configure the start-up behaviour. They can be any of the following switches. For the first character of an option switch, the hyphen character '-' can be used as an alternative to the '/' character.
By default, when searching for a licence, OrcaWave searches for licences provided by both FlexNet and dongle. By default, OrcaWave will first search for whichever of FlexNet or dongle most recently succeeded. The following switches allow you to modify this default behaviour.
By default, when searching for a licence on a dongle, OrcaWave searches first for a licence on a local dongle and then for a licence on a network dongle. The following switches allow you to modify this default behaviour.
These switches determine the processing priority of OrcaWave. The available switches are /RealtimePriority, /HighPriority, /AboveNormalPriority, /NormalPriority, /BelowNormalPriority, /LowPriority.
By default, when performing calculations with multiple threads, OrcaWave attempts to assign threads evenly between all processor groups. This behaviour can be suppressed by this command line switch. If group mapping support is suppressed then all threads will run on the same processor group, and will respect the affinity mask of the OrcaWave process.
The /ThreadCount switch allows you to set the number of execution threads used by OrcaWave for parallel processing. For example, /ThreadCount=1 forces OrcaWave to use a single execution thread which has the effect of disabling parallel processing.
The /ThickLines switch allows you to specify a minimum thickness for lines drawn on OrcaWave 3D view windows. For example, using the switch /ThickLines=5 forces OrcaWave to draw all lines at a thickness of at least 5. If no value is specified (i.e. the switch is /ThickLines), then the minimum thickness is taken to be 2.
This switch has been added to make OrcaWave 3D views clearer when projected onto a large screen.
Installation is only supported on 64 bit systems. The installation package copies both 32 and 64 bit versions of the executables. The shortcuts and file associations are configured to execute the 64 bit version. If you wish to create a shortcut to the 32 bit version, you will need to set it up yourself – the installation program does not do so. The 32 bit executable is named OrcaWave.exe and the 64 bit executable is named OrcaWave64.exe.
The 64 bit version runs quicker and can access more memory than the 32 bit version. This is especially significant for machines with a very large number of processors.
OrcaWave automation capabilities are implemented in the OrcaFlex DLL, OrcFxAPI, which is available in both 32 and 64 bit versions. The different versions of the DLL are both named OrcFxAPI.dll. The installation program installs binary files (.dll, .lib) to <InstallationDir>\OrcFxAPI\Win32 and <InstallationDir>\OrcFxAPI\Win64 respectively. Please refer to the OrcFxAPI help for details of how to link to OrcFxAPI.dll.