Run a simulation using the command line

Summary

This tutorial aims to show you how to run a simulation on the new command line Bladed executable.

Prerequisites

Latest version of Bladed Next Gen and Samples installed including the Bladed Python packages. Check the setting up page if you have not done so already.
Licence for Bladed Next Gen (request a licence).
Bladed Results Viewer.

Subjects covered

By the end of this tutorial you should have:

Run bladed.exe with a sample input.
Visualised the results with Results Viewer.

Bladed Next Gen input

The new Bladed input uses the JSON file format, the next tutorials go into detail on the contents of these files, for now we only want to be able to run a simulation.

Sample input decks

There are two example models provided in the samples that can be executed in this tutorial.

Running a simulation

Bladed Next Gen is a command line application, which means you will need a Windows terminal to be able to execute the simulation you want. The good news is that the Bladed tools set is automatically added to you system path and are able to run from anywhere in your file system by simply using the following command:

bladed -d <full_path_to_json_input>

Running Demo A example

If you have not done this already, unzip the samples folder and locate demo_a_pcoeffs.json.

Open Windows Command Line (cmd) or PowerShell terminal.

The CMD can be started by typing cmd in your start menu and pressing enter:

Figure 1: Opening the Windows Command Line terminal.

You might want to move to the samples folder in your command line. The following command is just an example you will have to adapt to the folder where you downloaded the samples:

C:\> cd c:\downloads\bladed-ng-samples_0.5.1\

Once you are in the folder where you have the samples, the following command will run the simulation with the demo_a_pcoeffs.json input file:

C:\downloads\bladed-ng-samples_0.5.1\> bladed.exe -d demo_a_pcoeffs.json

Depending on your chosen folder structure, and whether or not you have moved to the samples folder, you might need to adjust the path where your input file is. Instead of calling the input file just by name you might need to add the full path of the file. This can be done automatically if you drag the file from your Windows Explorer into the command line.

C:\> bladed.exe -d c:\downloads\bladed-ng-samples_0.5.1\demo_a_pcoeffs.json

Tip

You can drag a file from a Windows Explorer into a Windows command line (cmd) or PowerShell terminal, and this will paste the path to the file into the prompt, avoiding the risk of a mistype. You can also use the Tab key to complete a folder or file path.

Specifying the output path

The current Demo A example defaults the output to your current working folder (the folder where in the command line you invoke bladed.exe) because it has that specified inside the sample input file. If no path is specified in the input, then Bladed will stop the simulation with an error. Currently the error message in Bladed does not always display on screen, but it always shows in $TE file.

*** ERROR:   Could not find the output directory at Outputs->OutputDirectory   Exiting with return code 3

This behaviour might change in a future version of Bladed but for now, as a norm you should always specify where your outputs go by stating the -o <output_folder> in the command line when invoking bladed.exe. In the following command change <output_folder> to the desired output location:

bladed demo_a_pcoeffs.json -o <output_folder>

Simulation command line extended options

The command line execution extended options can be visualised by calling the help documentation:

bladed.exe -h

It will yield the following output:

Bladed is wind turbine simulation software for the design and certification of onshore and offshore wind turbines.
Usage:
  bladed [OPTION...] *.json

  -h, --help           Print a help statement to std out.
  -v, --version        Print the product version number and quit.
  -s, --schema         Print the supported schema version of the input models
                       and quit.
  -u, --unattended     Run as unattended, no user prompts are issued.
  -d, --datamodel arg  The full path to JSON datamodel file (if not provided,
                       a file named 'bladed.json' will be looked for in the
                       working directory). (default: bladed.json)
  -i, --input arg      The full path to input file (if not provided, a file
                       named 'DTBLADED.IN' will be looked for in the working
                       directory). (default: DTBLADED.IN)
  -o, --output arg     An output directory to write results and message files
                       to.  This will override the location specified in the
                       input file. (default: )
  -n, --runname arg    A name stem to use for all of the output files.  This
                       will override the name specified in the input file.

Analysing the results

If your simulation run correctly it will have produced the output files you are already used to see when working with Bladed 4.16.

demo_a_output_files — Figure 2: Expected outputs in windows explorer after running the simulation with Bladed Next Gen.

You will be able to open the outputs using the latest version of Bladed Results Viewer.

Figure 3: Demo A results plotted in Results Viewer.

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