Execution Modes

VITESS provides some tools to deal with series of simulations.
With series we mean slightly different simulations of a given instrument, where some parameters are changed to observe and analyse the differences.

First of all we need to keep GUI settings alongside with parameter files (input and output) in a common place: the parameter directory.

VITESS supports this parameter directory in

• copying parameter files to this directory on "load instrument"
• saving a Xc<date>.log file in this directory
• providing all programs in the execution pipe with a generic -P <dir> parameter
• doing all executions with that working directory

What if we want to re-simulate a given problem, e.g. when we want to test a new program version or some minor parameter change?

Without any GUI support we would copy the parameter directory recursively to a new place, redo the simulation from that directory, and compare files one by one (sizes, file dates). This has the advantage of not to change or possibly destroy any old output, but populates your hard disk with many duplicates.

With VITESS you may use Options/"Execution Mode" mode "save old" to re-do an old simulation. In that mode every plain file of the parameter directory is saved to a save_<n> sub directory before execution of the command pipe. After pipe execution VITESS tells which files have been changed in contents and lists those files in the save_<n> subdirectory; duplicates in the subdirectory are removed.

You may select the mode "copy results" to save results of a simulation to a Results subdirectory. All files except the log file in the parameter directory, which have a modification date later than the simulation start time, are copied to the Results subdirectory after finishing the simulation, the file name prepended with the creation data like Results/20100927-160057.a.dat for a file a.dat created on the 27 th of September in 2010.

If you plan to simulate an instrument with varied parameters, you should consider the VITESS tool Generate Series.