OOF2: The Manual

1.3. Learning OOF2
	Chapter 1. Getting Started

1.3. Learning OOF2

One way of learning how to use OOF2 is to just start it up and give it a try. This isn't quite as outrageous as it may seem. The Task Pages are arranged in a more-or-less linear fashion, and you won't go far wrong by progressing through them in order. Most buttons and menus in the OOF2 GUI have tooltips associated with them. These are the small helpful hints that pop up when the mouse is over a GUI component. The tooltips may be sufficient to get an adventurous user started.

The not so adventurously inclined should start either by reading Chapter 2 or working through the on-line tutorials. The tutorials cover all of the OOF2 basics by working some simple examples. To start a tutorial, start OOF2 and choose a tutorial from the Tutorials item in the Help menu. The Tutorial window, shown in Figure 1.2, will appear.

Figure 1.2. The Tutorial Window

The following tutorials are available:

Basics. This tutorial begins by introducing the features of the Tutorial window, and then defines the most important OOF2 terminology. It introduces just enough OOF2 commands to bring up all the major windows, and points out their features.
A Simple Example. This tutorial presents a simple but complete OOF2 calculation.
Microstructure. This tutorial goes into more detail about the care and feeding of an OOF2 Microstructure. It shows how to create one from an Image, perform Image modifications, select pixels, and create pixel groups.
Skeleton. This tutorial does for the OOF2 Skeleton what the previous one did for the Microstructure. It demonstrates how to create a Skeleton and to modify it so that it conforms to its Microstructure.
Moving Nodes. This tutorial goes into more depth on the topic of node motion, which is one way of modifying an OOF2 Skeleton. It also discusses the important topic of Active Areas, which restrict the scope of OOF2 operations.
Skeleton Boundaries. This tutorial demonstrates how to create boundaries in a Skeleton. Boundaries are useful because boundary conditions are applied to them.
Postprocessing. This tutorial describes some of the ways of extracting data from an OOF2 calculation.
Nonrectangular Domain. This tutorial demonstrates how to solve a problem on a non-rectangular Microstructure.
Adaptive Mesh Refinement. This tutorial describes how to refine a Mesh after obtaining a solution in order to obtain a better solution.
Solving Time Dependent Systems. This tutorial demonstrates how to solve a time-dependent problem with OOF2.


1.2. Running OOF2		Chapter 2. OOF2 Concepts