Discussion Forum

Hi Danial

do not forget to (also) send these suggestions to "support"; us users on the nforum have little chances to implement them in COMSOL ;)

Ivar

Hi Danial

do not forget to (also) send these suggestions to "support"; us users on the nforum have little chances to implement them in COMSOL ;)

Ivar

Hi Ivar,

I'm not sure to do it or not. I don't want to affect my very important support tickets (waiting for several days already) with these suggestions, nor look like support thirsty based on statistics. How about if they separate these tickets and the job related ones?

I had also sent a previous forum post (here: bit.ly/9EtY1l) but seems no one cared. A more healthy one would have been if the forums were categorized, etc as suggested in the post above.

Hi

Well, my experience is that when you document and explain the reason for a suggestion, and its really valid and of general sens, it is appreciated, but you should not expect a mail exchange on it, it's for COMSOL to take it or to forget it, therefore I put "Re: Suggestion for vxxx" in my mail and then I have been pleased to se several come up with the new releases.

Again, we should not bombard them with too trivial items, but it's the same for general support, really pass a few hours to solve an issue before mailing them down, and check that we have got sufficient training, that it's not a too stupid question.

Normally, if you try to put yourself in the position of the persons that are supposed to help/support you, and you conclude that your demand would make you be interested to reply, then you have maximised the chances for a good service, But is this not just normal human interactions ? Things passes better with a smile, no :)
Even on internet we should remain ourselves, not robots.

Have fun Comsoling
Ivar

Hello Danial,
the issue with probe plots and plot while solving in different windows has been fixed in the upcoming 4.0a release (targeted June 2010). I guess that answers your original question.

This discussion forum is primarily a user-to-user discussion forum. COMSOL employees monitor the forum regularly, and remove material violating forum rules. Sometimes we answer, but there is no guarantee that you will get answers or solutions from COMSOL. If you have feedback on our products, web, or other services, please send it to support@comsol.com. Here we have a ticketing system to follow up and answer all customer feedback, as well as internal tracking systems for quality assurance (like bug report systems).

That said, I picked up your long list of suggestions you pointed to (bit.ly/9EtY1l) and the good thing is that most of it is fixed in the 4.0a release. We'll comment on it in this group a little later. We will also consider your forum feature suggestions.

There is no problem with filing several unrelated questions to support@comsol.com. The support staff will separate them into different cases. If you do, please let us know the order of importance to help support engineers prioritize your cases.

kind regards
Niklas Rom, COMSOL

Hi Danial

do not forget to (also) send these suggestions to "support"; us users on the nforum have little chances to implement them in COMSOL ;)

Ivar

Hi Ivar,

I'm not sure to do it or not. I don't want to affect my very important support tickets (waiting for several days already) with these suggestions, nor look like support thirsty based on statistics. How about if they separate these tickets and the job related ones?

I had also sent a previous forum post (here: bit.ly/9EtY1l) but seems no one cared. A more healthy one would have been if the forums were categorized, etc as suggested in the post above.

I remember that from another post you mentioned you're not happy with the way FEM softwares are.

My understanding is that as there is (was) not much competition, FEM developers tended to act the way Microsoft was: a closed propriety and closed business model, add to it a super-power behavior toward the customers (i.e. "A" company you mentioned). See that even Microsoft had to change once Mac and Google entered with their hype and open-source structure. Win 7 is an example, where they listened to many customer suggestions. Comsol is a younger company with a web 2 kind of more open behavior. She is trying to change this behavior, having even this forum for example. Nevertheless, they should shorten the distance between the devs and clients.

Wouldn't be cool to have a plugin system for Comsol, the way Apps are for iPhone? People then could share their modules freely, or you could have another mesher, or a different solver. For feedbacks, why not use a system like ubuntu? take a look: brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

Today a new feedback site is launched at brainstorm.ubuntu.com that will make it easier for users of Ubuntu to suggests ideas for improvements. Voting makes it clear which ideas have the most support in the user community and should be given priority.

Edit: Thanks Niklas. Saw your post after replying. Please bear with my comments even though unrelated to tech parts of Comsol.

Hi

two comments:

For me COMSOL is still a jung company about a decade I believe, and they are not that many, and I hope they will remain reasonnable in size. Because over the last 30 years, the two three companies that have served me for computing tools have also grown from 20-50 to X-tousands persons: That is nice, clear for them, but all these persons need to be payd too, and that is from our pocket ! After a while selling new software the market get saturated, there remains only the maintenance fees, the result is that the three others I mentionned are today so expensive that I cannot longer afford them, they want more than what I can earn to pay them, because I'm still alone to do the same job as before (even if I'm part of a larger company), my ROI of the use of their tools has not changed that much, and are not the same as the expectations and need of these large software companies.

The other effet is that these "big" ones, after some while, are bought out by managers and lawers, and to keep their market share they tend to go to propretarian solutions and fight hard against anybody approaching their domain, and the lawers gain thier mony by filing law cases against you (sounds familiar no ?), there are many examples out there, not only in the software industry. And the market rules deos not always allow nice flowers to grow, it's in their view often better to cut the heads immediatly before people see them. So I can well understand that COMSOL is not wanting to directly propose exchange tools that might put too much attention on them, they have already had their fight, and we users were the ultimate loosers (3.5-3.5a).

But there are other ways to get around, as you say open market tools, but one still need someone to adapt to them. For FEM there is NAFEM that is also working for some kind of normalisation, but they do not have the money power of the big ones, I believe.

Nothing new here, I read about similar stories in my history books, so we havent changed that much over the decenies ;)

Have fun Comsoling
Ivar

How was this issue fixed. I'm in 4.0a trying to plot 1-D and 2-D plots while solving, but they both alternate in the graphics tab.

How was this issue fixed. I'm in 4.0a trying to plot 1-D and 2-D plots while solving, but they both alternate in the graphics tab.

Agreed. I, too, don't see any transparent way to simultaneously plot in separate windows. If anyone has figured it out, please share. Thanks.

How was this issue fixed. I'm in 4.0a trying to plot 1-D and 2-D plots while solving, but they both alternate in the graphics tab.

It is fixed related to the first issue, where graphics window and probes were overwriting each other. However, as you mentioned and i had also posted here before: www.comsol.com/community/forums/general/thread/5591/ , the probes now overwrite each other. A cosmol employee posted a workaround in another post, but I couldn't get it to work yet.

Hi

I understand it's an issue related to:

a) by default only one Probe plot window in 4.0a

b) Probe plots are defined in the top of the model tree, but for the details are completed in the Solver and Results section as (different) tables and (one) plot tree entry.

So if you delete your solution (not clear) to have it regenerated (because you have changed something more complex and want COMSOL to regenerate a default Solver/Result sequence) then you get all new plots overlapping, while if you then go into the Results>Plot section and add andupdate the links to the different tables you can get different plots for the next time you run the model.

By the way, to reduce the model file size, I now do:
1) FIle > Reset
2) select the first Mesh Size and do an "Update to here" (to clear the mesh sequence)
3) Clear (not Delete) all Solutions

then save the file

--
Good luck
Ivar

Hi Ivar,

In my 4.0a v4.0.0.982, there is no "Reset" under "File." (only a "Reset History")

Instead, clearing solutions is done under the Study tab => Solver Configurations => Clear Solutions.

Dave

Hi

You are right its the "Reset History" this clears the history that you would find in the ".m" file if you save it in matlab format. It's far easier to read then and the file is more compact.

And the "clear solution" is done as you say a couple of levels below root you have the choice to clear or delet, but DELETE also deletes ALLrelated Result plot settings so you must recreate them. However if you change to much in your solver settings the clear does not redefine the sequence so it might not solve, or not with what you expect !.

Therefore often I recreate a new "study", redefine the plots and then only delete the old study (I hope they will soon give us the cut/copy&paste option on there plot branches to make this easier

--
Good luck
Ivar

Has this been resolved yet? Plotting multiple results while solving in separate windows or tabs? This feature will be really useful...I am interested in seeing how more than one expressions change with time in my time dependent analysis...

Hi

Mostly, yes, by default all (most) probes come in the same window, but once launced, or generated once, you can edit and duplicate the plot nodes for the probe plots and get them referred to different views. It's manuel but it works, on the other hand you cannot expect COMSOL to "understand" in which combination you want to see your plots, for all cases

--
Good luck
Ivar

Thanks for your reply Ivar...

I have been trying to plot multiple expressions while solving but am not able to do so...I have checked Plot while solving in the "Results while solving" tab..But how do I enter more than expressions to be plot in separate windows while solving?

Thanks
Deepika

Hi

use the Definitions Probe Plots

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Good luck
Ivar

From the discussion it seems possible to have multiple probe plots. But is it possible to have more than one 'Plot while solving'? For example I want to be able to show a velocity slice plot and a pressure slice plot in different windows.

Or is this a feature that is lacking?

--
Steven Conrad, MD PhD
LSU Health