MolflowCLI problems with outgassing changes

General discussion
1

Hello,

I started using the MolFlowCLI and ran into some problems with changing the outgassing. Either the parameter changes are not performed or the outgassing is 10 times higher than it was set in the CLI. In the following some context how I performed the changes and what results/errors I then get.
For test puposes I created a straight pipe with the inbuild test pipe feature of the MolFlow GUI, so that Facet 1 is outgassing at a rate of 1 mbar*L/s and the sticking factor of Facet 1 and 2 is set to 1. I also chose a random selection of 4 facets to test parameter changes to selections.
Case 1: changing the outgassing of exactly one facet with the command “–setParams facet.1.outgassing=1.0” results in an outgassing change on facet 1 to 10.0 - this factor of 10 is the case for any input I give, for example 0.5->5 or 1e4->1e5. Can somebody explain why my input is always multiplied by 10?
Case 2: changing the outgassing of a selection with the command “–setParams facet.“selection”.outgassing=1.0” does not change any outgassing, because of an parseFacet error: ‘Could not parse facet id or range’. The selection is defined in my geometry and should be accessible as far as I understood the documentation.
Case 3: changing the outgassing to low values like 1e-5 with “–setParams facet.1.outgassing=1e-4” sets the outgassing to zero. This is probably my biggest problem, because I want to use the MolFlowCLI to perform several low pressure and therefore low outgassing simulations. Changing the parameters in the GUI does not raise any errors, but somehow the CLI application seems to have problems with low outgassing.

I hope somebody can help me with those problems or explain where the error is.
Many thanks,
Moritz

2

Many thanks for reporting this.
The outgassing parameter change was written by an other colleague, and it looks like mbar.l/s and Pa.m3/s (internal representation of the outgassing) got mixed up, resulting in a factor of 10 error.
I’ve opened an issue and will report back when fixed.

3

Thanks for the fast reply!

There is another question regarding the change of outgassing for a selection of facets. Does the command from Case 2 “–setParams facet.“selection”.outgassing=1.0”

  1. change the outgassing of each facet in the selection to 1.0
    or
  2. change the combined outgassing of all facets in the selection to 1.0 ?

Since selecting multiple facets in the MolFlow GUI and changing the outgassing results in the second point (combined outgassing is changed to specified value) it would be nice to have this same feature in the MolFLowCLI - if it is not already implemented.
Maybe you can answer this question directly or forward it to the right person for me.
Many thanks in advance

4

Hello Moritz,

I worked on this problem and you can download a temporary version from here (build-artifact column, depending on your OS):

case1) I’ve fixed the off-by-10 error
case2) facet."selection".outgassing=1.0 is valid and should work, as I tested it. There was a bug if the selection name contained a space, which I now fixed.
case3) Couldn’t reproduce, I could even set outgassing to 1e-12, etc. Send me a file where the command fails please.

I also changed the CLI to print every parameter change (or error).

As for the selection of facets, both in CLI (and in the GUI!) applying an outgassing to a group sets outgassings one-by-one (and not the total or combined).

I’ve added a new parameter type specificOutgassing, for example facet.1-10.specificOutgassing=123 which allows to set the area-wise outgassing (in mbar.l/s/cm2 as in the GUI) to a specific value, allowing you to set the combined outgassing for a selection easily.

Let me know if the temp version works and please provide feedback. Cheers, Marton

5

Hello Marton,

thank you very much for the fast fix and the addition of the specific outgassing command. case1) and case3) work perfectly well now.
However, for case2) the CLI still prints out “[parseFacet] Could not parse facet id or range: selection”.

test.zip (4.7 KB)

This is the test geometry that I use with 3 different selections and all selections generate this error so far. Maybe it’s a problem of the selections itself. I also include the command line that I use to set the outgassing that produces the problem.
’ .\molflowCLI.exe -f test.zip --setParams facet.“selection”.specificOutgassing=1.0e-3 -t 10 --verbose ’

The updated version already helps me a lot!
Cheers Moritz

6

Hello Moritz,

There are two problems, both of them are hard to catch…

  1. in your string you use non-ASCII quotation marks “ and ” instead of the standard " (code 34):

image
image789×618 20.4 KB

  1. Operating systems don’t pass the " to molflow, but parse it locally (molflow receives facet.selection. instead of facet."selection".

To fix:

  • Windows command line: quote " with \

molflowCLI.exe -f test.zip --setParams facet.\"selection\".specificOutgassing=1.0e-3 -t 10 --verbose

  • Windows Powershell:

surround with single quotes

image
image929×19 2.48 KB

or for better highlighting:

image
image938×23 2.75 KB

And it will work:

image
image904×65 3.14 KB

I’ll add this to the documentation.
(I used --setParamsByFile when testing so I wasn’t aware of this)

7

I didn’t know that the " quotation marks are parsed locally, but the proposed fix works well. Just as a note, if someone has a similar problem: the fix for the Windows Powershell didn’t work with my version 5.1.22621.2506 , but with an update to PowerShell 7 everthing worked as expected.

Now everthing works well and as expected. Thank you for all the help.

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