Does someone know how to make hardcopy plots during a non-interactive batch calculation? In the given case I want to make contour plots (e.g. p) of a specific surface in the domain for several iteration-steps (e.g. 10, 20, 30,...). I tried it first interactively by using macros, which define variable of interest, range, ..., camera position as well as a repeating command for making hardcopies at desired iteration steps. Interactively this works all fine, but in the batch job there isn't of corse a GUI; hence an error message!

Has someone an idea?

As I know, you can make your journal file by text mode and GUI mode. In case of GUI mode, you can make your journal file by just clicking the options sequencely. Your mouse clicking is converted into text commands and those commands can be saved as a journal file.

Use the menu "File->Write->Start Journal".

Be sure not to use too many GUI commands. According to my experiences, there are some problems during the batch job.

P.S. You can also mix those two ways. "Text mode+GUI mode in a journal file"

Use the 'Execute commands' option (in Fluent 5 it is in the 'Solve/Monitors' panel.

Here you can define any number of commands you want carried out at every n'th iteration or timestep. Find out what the command should be by using the text interface. Your commands will look like:

/plot/solution pressure /file/hardcopy

with the necessary parameters.

That didn't come through right. The commands should be:

/plot/solution pressure

/file/hardcopy

Instead of setting all hardcopy parameters explicitly I use the GUI to set it all the way I want it (TIFF, color, size, etc) and then the 'hardcopy' command above doesn't need any parameters anymore.

... thank you both for your response, chiseung and Erwin.

Unfortunately I saw that my english is still improvable as there is probably still a slight missunderstanding. Both of your options, journal file as well as "execute commands", including the "macro" option that I mentioned in my first mail, are well known. And as I described, at least I tried, are both ways working very fine (by the way I made the same experience as chiseung in regard on compatibility of GUI and text interface command) - in the interactive mode (!) but NOT when I perform the calculation in the background = batch mode.

The problem appears e.g. with following command (journal file or in a line of the execute commands):

/display contour absolute-pressure 0 200e05

Fluent (in my case 5.5) tries to "display" a "contour plot" of "absolute-pressure" in the range between "0" and "200e05" Pa. But since Fluent has been started without GUI or graphics (... fluent -g < ...) it cannot display a contour plot (or any plot). Accordingly it cannot make a hardcopy, too, as there is no plot!

Instead I get in the outputfile an error message like:

Error: No graphic functions are available Error Object: ()

…after Fluent has read the "/display contour absolute-pressure 0 200e05" line

Hence, the question is: Has anyone made hardcopy plots during batch-run (not interactively!) successfully? (what kind of graphic settings have been chosen in the command_file? -g, -gr or -gu or other specific commands?)

I hope my problem became now a bit more clear…

Thanks in advance

Hi,

I think that it is impossible to generate hard copies during a batch run, since there isn't anything from which you could do the copy.

Running in batch mode normally assumes that graphics were excluded by the -g option. Hence all graphics are switched off.