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Have you ever wanted to find the differences between
two DTF files? If you have, then you will probably be
interested in a DTF utility included in your ESI
Software installation. The utility is called
dtf_diff and can be found in your
UTILS_2009.0/bin directory.
The dtf_diff utility can be used to
compare two DTF files and provides output on the
differences between them. The usage for the
dtf_diff utility is
dtf_diff dtf_filename_1.DTF sim_num
dtf_filename_2.DTF sim_num
The sim_num part is the simulation
number (in most cases this is one) for the DTF file
you want to compare. By default, all of the information in
the DTF files is compared. However, there exist several options
to ignore certain information in the DTF files. The
options are:
-
-igsim: ignore the differences in the
simulation data
-
-igvc: ignore the differences in the
volume/initial data
-
-igbc: ignore the differences in the
boundary record data
-
-igunit: ignore the differences in the
units
-
-igversion: ignore the DTF version
number differences
-
-igguiversion: ignore the CFD-ACE-GUI
version number differences
-
-ig varname: ignore specific name
specified by varname
There are also two additional options for more control over the comparison:
-
-geom: compare the geometry data
-
-p number: set the float precision for
the comparison (default is exact comparison)
As an example, I will compare two DTF files I have
setup to run a heat conduction case. The only
difference between the files is the temperature I
have specified on one of the boundaries, and the
filenames. The usage for this case is:
dtf_diff heat_conduction.DTF 1
heat_conduction_1.DTF 1
The output will be written to the command line, or
you can pipe the output into a file like this:
dtf_diff heat_conduction.DTF 1
heat_conduction_1.DTF 1 > differences.dat
Keep in mind that you can only use the
dtf_diff utility from the command line.
The utility
output for this example is presented in Figure 1 below. It shows that the filenames
are different and the BC record with key 54 have a different temperature.
Figure 1. Output from the dtf_diff utility
You can then open the DTF file in
CFD-ACE-GUI, go to the BC tab and sort the BC's by
key number in the BC Explorer, and verify that the BC with
key 54 is indeed different in the two files.
This is a very useful and easy to use utility. The
next time you want to compare DTF files, try using it.
If you have any questions about this tip or would like us to discuss other topics in the future,
please let us know.
Regards,
ESI CFD Support Team
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