Quick Start

In this section, it is shown how to work with a CaseDescription and how to convert an ALFAcase from an existent project (exported from ALFAsim) to a Description.

CaseDescription

The CaseDescription is a Python class that helps users to create a valid .alfacase file programmatically, by instantiating a CaseDescription object.

To create a CaseDescription instance it is necessary to have a Python Interpreter with at least version 3.6 and the ALFAsim-SDK Python package.

Note

For more details on how to install Python check the official docs. It is recommended that you install the ALFAsim-SDK using a Python Virtual Environment. For more details, see Virtual Environments and Packages in Python documentation.

From a terminal, and inside a virtual environment, update pip:

>>> python -m pip install -U pip

Install the ALFAsim-SDK with:

>>> pip install alfasim-sdk

Note

All classes and constants that will be used to configure a project can be accessed through the main module of alfasim_sdk

See section Full API Reference for all available classes and options, as well as which types and validators are applied at the time of object instantiation.

Knowing the type is important to create instantiate a class properly. For example, if you try to create a NodeDescription, the node_type attribute must be a string of one of the options available on NodeCellType, otherwise, a ValueError is raised.

>>> import alfasim_sdk
>>> alfasim_sdk.NodeDescription(name="Node", node_type=1)
[ ... ]
ValueError: 'node_type' must be in <enum 'NodeCellType'> (got 1)

>>> alfasim_sdk.NodeDescription(name='Node', node_type=alfasim_sdk.NodeCellType.Pressure)

As already informed at the beginning of the section, ALFAsim accepts only .alfacase files, the description classes are only tools that help the creation and manipulation of a project programmatically in an easier way.

To convert a Description to alfacase you can use the function convert_description_to_alfacase and to convert a .alfacase file to Description you can use the function convert_alfacase_to_description.

Convert an ALFAsim Project to a Description

One of the easiest ways to create a .alfacase file is converting an existent project from an ALFAsim application. It’s also possible to convert this .alfacase file to a Description class using the function convert_alfacase_to_description.

First, open an existing project and export it using the option Export ALFAsim Case file... as illustrated in the figure below:

The generated file will contain all project settings, including the default values used by ALFAsim.

In a Python file, import the alfasim_sdk module and call the convert_alfacase_to_description function informing the file path of the .alfacase file.

>>> from pathlib import Path
>>> alfacase_file_path = Path("...")

>>> from alfasim_sdk import convert_alfacase_to_description
>>> case_description_from_alfacase = convert_alfacase_to_description(alfacase_file_path)

Check out the Example section that shows how to create a simple project from scratch and gives a walkthrough of the main points necessary to configure a project.