OOF: Finite Element Analysis of Microstructures

Read in the image file ppmfile which should be in the portable pixel map (.ppm) format developed by Jef Poskanzer. The shareware program xv is one of many tools that can convert images into ppm format. ^[7] Actually, ppm2oof can read any of the six .ppm variants: .ppm, .pgm, and .pbm in either ascii or binary format. It can also read image files compressed with the gzip.

Write the goof file to standard out. This would be useful in conjunction with the -start option described below.

Run in text mode, without opening up any graphics windows.

Save the commands from your ppm2oof session in an ascii log file. The logfile may be rerun, with or without editing, with the -start option. See the /log menu for more on log files.

Specify startup options. In its simplest form, cmd is the name of a file containing either ppm2oof commands (as written by the -log option) or configuration data (as written by the /configuration/save command. Either of these is useful to get ppm2oof to resume operation from a previously saved state. In addition, loading from a log file is useful for showing demonstrations of ppm2oof, or entertainment of the `player-piano' variety. If you have not used ppm2oof before, it may be instructive for you to type ppm2oof -file spinodal.ppm -start spinodal_select_1.log and then watch what happens. ^[8] This also creates a goof file spinodal_1.goof on which you can try an oof calculation.

In more complicated situations, the argument to -start can be a comma separated list of filenames and commands. Files and commands are loaded in the order provided. It's not required, but common sense dictates that configuration files should be at the beginning of the list. Commands in the list are distinguished from filenames by beginning with an exclamation point (which probably needs to be prefixed with a backslash to avoid being interpreted by the Unix shell). If any commands contain spaces, they must be within quotation marks. For example, ppm2oof -start "picture.cfg,\!select none,command.log" loads the configuration file picture.cfg, runs the command /select/none, and finally loads the command file command.log.

Initialize the random number generator with the integer n. This was put into the startup options before the -start option became so complicated. It's equivalent to -start \!seed=n.

Quit the program after processing the -start options. It's not advisable to put the /quit command in a script or -start command, because it asks for confirmation before quitting. This option makes the program quit silently, as is appropriate for batch jobs.

Print this list of options, and quit. If you truly meant "Help!" send us email <oof_manager@nist.gov> or dial 911, whichever is more appropriate.