TUFLOW FV SMS Interface
Description
The TUFLOW SMS Interface:
- Creates a TUFLOW FV directory structure
- Converts the SMS .2dm file to TUFLOW FV format inputs.
- Creates a template TUFLOW FV control file (*.fvc).
- Runs TUFLOW FV.
Required files can be downloaded from the TUFLOW website: http://www.tuflow.com/FV%20Utilities.aspx
Note: The SMS Interface is not required to create a model and run TUFLOW FV. The interface has been developed to fast track the preliminary steps in developing a model. Equivilent inputs can be defined by following the steps:
- Creating model geometry inputs (SMS .2dm file).
- Manually defining the model directory structure.
- Manually creating the TUFLOW FV control file (*.fvc).
- Running the developed model.
Installation
Download the TUFLOW FV SMS Interface files from the TUFLOW website: http://www.tuflow.com/FV%20Utilities.aspx
The following files are included in the download:
- Convert_and_run.bat
- Mesh_to_fv.exe
- TUFLOW_FV.2dm
The TUFLOW FV SMS Interface does not need to be installed, however it does need to be configured.
The convert_and_run.bat file is a batch file that will be initialised by SMS. This needs to be configured to your machine, to do this, edit the Convert_and_run.bat file in a text editor. An example Convert_and_run.bat file is show in below.
The 8th line defines the location of the TUFLOW FV executable, the highlighted text needs to be replaced with the location of the TUFLOW FV executable on your machine.
Tip: In Windows 7 if you explore to the path of the executable, hold shift down and then right click on the executable “Copy As Path” should be an option. This copies the pathname to the clipboard and can be pasted into the text editor.
Similarly line 7 needs to be edited to define the location of ‘mesh_to_FV.exe’ file.
Save the updated Convert_and_run.bat file
In SMS, the interface needs to be configured to utilise the batch file that we just modified. To do this, in SMS select:
Edit\Preferences…
Navigate to the file locations tab and then in the Model Executables under the Generic entry , select “Browse”, navigate to the correct directory, select “All Files” from the files of type dropbox and then and select the convert_and_run.bat.
Loading the Interface
The steps involved in loading the interface and creating a model are:
- Load the TUFLOW FV definition file:
- Before starting the creation of the model mesh, the TUFLOW FV definition needs to be loaded into SMS, this is done by opening the TUFLOW_FV.2dm provided with the download.
- Once the TUFLOW FV definition file is loaded a TUFLOW FV menu item is visible (With no model mesh created most of the options are un-selectable (grey))
- Create the model mesh.
- Set the model boundaries and parameters.
- Select Run TUFLOW FV (in the menu choose TUFLOW FV\Run TUFLOW FV).
An example outlining how to use the TUFLOW FV SMS Interface to create and run a TUFLOW FV model is provided here: