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OpenMDAO / Aviary

NASA's aircraft analysis, design, and optimization tool
https://openmdao.github.io/Aviary/
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Correcting the example commands for the engine deck conversion and adding a notice for future users #340

Closed ChrisPsenica closed 1 day ago

ChrisPsenica commented 1 week ago

The Aviary website gives instructions on how to convert an engine deck using the convert_engine command in Aviary. These commands are not entirely correct however. When running the command exactly as it is from the Aviary website (using the FLOPS conversion for example) there is an error messaged returned saying that FLOPS is not a recognized command:

Screenshot 2024-06-24 113450

This happens for all conversions (FLOPS, GASP, GASP_TP). However this issue is solved when modifying the given command from the Aviary website from "aviary convert_engine turbofan_22k.eng turbofan_22k.txt FLOPS" to "aviary convert_engine turbofan_22k.eng turbofan_22k.txt -f FLOPS". The added '-f' before FLOPS allows the command to be recognized. Additionally, I added another bullet point note to the same page where it informs the user that in order for the engine conversion to work the original engine deck file must not have any headers to it. When leaving in the headers an error message is returned stating troubles with converting a string to float:

Screenshot 2024-06-24 113920

ChrisPsenica commented 1 week ago

Pull request to clarify some instructions on the Aviary website. I also attached the original engine deck file which was causing issues with the headers. file removed for including real-world product name

crecine commented 1 week ago

This was recently fixed by https://github.com/OpenMDAO/Aviary/pull/334/files however, the comment about the headers could still be useful (though I think it only applies to FLOPS decks)

jkirk5 commented 1 week ago

Adding a comment here to preserve some side conversations: Data with headers isn't supported by FLOPS, so a failure here is expected. IMO it's not necessary to specifically call out "no headers" since headers aren't a part of the FLOPS data format. Basically, the list of things that can't be in the data file is infinite. I think we need more helpful failure messages - right now we don't really check the data to catch issues so we just hard crash with an error like shown above. Adding some line-by-line checks for things like convertible to float, expected no. of columns, etc. would be helpful to the user... future ideas