FLAC3D Modeling • Introduction

Command Tools

When working with commands, there are multiple tools/utilities in the program to assist the user in building and understanding commands. These are introduced briefly here.

Inline Help

The Inline Help facility is available at the command prompt in the Console pane and in any file (data, FISH, etc.) loaded in the Edit pane. It provides an interactive tool for building commands and directly accessing help for commands and FISH functions. Following a stepwise path for command construction is a useful mechanism for learning commands and becoming familiar with their keywords.

Context-Sensitive Help

In the editor or in the command prompt, pressing F1 activates context-sensitive help. If the line currently containing the cursor is a command, the reference information for that command will be shown/opened in the documentation. If the line represents FISH and the cursor is positioned on a valid intrinsic, the documentation for that intrinsic will be shown.

Question Mark

While working at the command prompt, typing ? and pressing Enter will show a list of keywords available at the current cursor position. This is similar to the Inline Help facility, though simpler and less persistent — the user must invoke the ? command each time the list of keywords is needed.

Search

Every page in the documentation contains a search bar at the top right end of the document header. The search bar will return match results across the entire document set. The box uses a default logical “or” for all terms entered in the box. Phrase searching is not available.

Additional Facilities

FLAC3D Data File Conversion Tool

When a data file is loaded in FLAC3D, the program will automatically detect if it contains elements of pre-version-6.0 syntax, and, if so, offer to convert the file to 6.0 syntax. The conversion facility may also be explicitly invoked by the user from the main menu (Tools ‣ Conversion…). After conversion, the facility will automatically archive the “old” data file and will explicitly mark and cue within the data file any command that cannot be automatically converted. [JF: (build the link for this when page is built) See the topic “Using Conversion Tool” for complete information]. this paragraph needs to be rewritten to reflect whatever the final doc set actually provides

PFC Data File Conversion Tool

A conversion utility is also provided with PFC, although automatic detection of old-format data files has been disabled and the grpahical interface menu (Tools ‣ Conversion…) is not present. Instead, the user is asked to convert old-format data files through the program convert command.

Indexes in the Documentation

At the end of this document set, an index of all commands and FISH functions is available.