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Command line arguments

Last edited by Romain Boman

fossils can be run from the command line. This is can be very useful, especially for running simulation in the background or on a remote machine.

Example on Windows

Open a command line window (in Windows, type cmd in the search icon). Then copy an example to the current folder (it should be your home folder such as c:\Users\your_name):

C:\Users\boman>xcopy AppData\Local\Programs\Fossils\models\others\dolicorhynchops mymodel /E /I

This command copies the files related to dolicorhynchops to a folder named mymodel. The go to this subfolder:

cd mymodel

From there, fossils can be run with the following command:

..\AppData\Local\Programs\Fossils\fossils.exe

Add -h as an argument to display the help message:

usage: fossils.exe [-h] [--nogui] [--post] [-k K] [file]

positional arguments:
  file        python file

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit
  --nogui     disable any graphical output
  --post      display existing results
  -k K        nb of threads

Running the example is as easy as:

..\AppData\Local\Programs\Fossils\fossils.exe dolicorhynchops_10k.py

The workspace folder is created in the current folder:

dir workspace\dolicorhynchops_10k

displays

 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 7461-9FF9

 Directory of C:\Users\boman\mymodel\workspace\dolicorhynchops_10k

20/06/2022  14:09    <DIR>          .
20/06/2022  14:09    <DIR>          ..
20/06/2022  14:09           143 689 displacement_vector.msh
20/06/2022  14:09           143 682 force_vector.msh
20/06/2022  14:09         1 140 834 mesh.msh
20/06/2022  14:09            82 324 mesh.opt
20/06/2022  14:09           389 834 smooth_strain_tensor.msh
20/06/2022  14:09            61 638 smooth_strain_xx.msh
20/06/2022  14:09            61 638 smooth_strain_xy.msh
20/06/2022  14:09            61 638 smooth_strain_xz.msh
20/06/2022  14:09            61 638 smooth_strain_yy.msh
...

Results can be reloaded by adding --post at the end of the command:

..\AppData\Local\Programs\Fossils\fossils.exe dolicorhynchops_10k.py --post

The last interesting option is --nogui which deactivates the display of the results at the end of the simulation. This option is very useful when running several tests from a script.