Novapoint Noise Powerpack

This is an additional application to Novapoint Noise. It makes it possible to calculate noise without running AutoCAD/Novapoint. It also makes it possible to use free PC capacity over the network. This means multiplying the calculation speed! There is no limit to how many PC's may contribute to the calculations.

Powerpack consists of:

• A few functions in Novapoint Noise to import and export calculations. These are included in the license for Novapoint Noise.
• An application that may be run as a normal program or as a screen saver to run the calculations themselves. This is entirely license free and may be installed on as many PC's as desired. The installation just takes a few MB.

The installation procedure is the same whether Novapoint is installed or not. Novapoint Noise Powerpack will not interfere with any existing Novapoint installations.

For manual installation:

1. Create a directory for the Powerpack files.
2. Fetch the file Noise Powerpack.zip to this directory.
3. Unpack the zip file.
4. Delete the zip file.
5. Run PowerPackSetup.bat and enter directory names.
6. Restart the PC.

For distributed installation from a network directory, see PowerPackSilentSetup.bat.

Before starting to use Powerpack, one has to specify some directories. This is done during installation and may be changed manually as follows:

Menu: Noise > External calculation > Set directory

or

Start Binaries\Novapoint.Powerpack.exe (in the Novapoint directory)

or

Start “Screen” settings to set screen saver and press Settings.

A dialog box with the following alternatives appears:

Task directory
The directory that is used as base to export tasks and calculated results. If the tasks are to be calculated by several PC's, this has to be a directory in the network that all PC's have access to, and all PC's have to have the same directory set as Task directory.

Local directory
A local directory that is used for temporary files when the calculation application is running. If this one is not lying locally, the calculations will take more time.

OK
Closes the dialog box.

Calculate
Start calculation. This option is available only if Novapoint.Powerpack.exe is started. Calculation status comes as information in the dialog box.

Stop
Stops calculation. This option is available only if Novapoint.Powerpack.exe is started.

When the screen saver is installed and adjusted, it will when activated, check if there are calculation tasks in the Task directory. The screen gets black, but status information will be shown with text in varying colour, sliding around on the screen.

Export
At export, there is created a new directory under Task directory. The terrain model (*.tmg, *.gdd, *.gdh, *.gdi og *.gdn) is copied to this together with a file called Master.mst, containing all input data and information about the calculation. In addition there is created a number of files called *.tsk, each containing information about 10 calculation points. Both Master.mst and the *.tsk files are in XML-format. In the Master.mst file, the second line has amongst others information about which PC the task came from, e.g.: ”<PC='ABCDE' …”.

Calculation
During calculations the application checks Task directory to find possible tasks. If it finds a task where calculation is not completed, it copies the terrain model files and Master.mst to Local directory. Then the *.tsk-file is moved to Task directory\TasksUnderWork and copied to Local directory and calculation of these calculation points start. When all points in the file are calculated, a *.res-file is created. This is copied to Task directory\Results and the calculated *.tsk-file is removed from Task directory\TasksUnderWork to show that the task is carried out. The *.res file is in XML-format. The first line in the *.res file contains information about which PC has done the calculation, e.g.: ”<Calculation PC='EDCBA' …”.

Then the application checks whether or not there are more tasks in either Task directory, or if this is empty, in Task directory\TasksUnderWork. If not, it adds a file called finished.res to Task directory.

If the calculation is interrupted, this *.tsk file will be remaining in Task directory\TasksUnderWork to be recalculated.

Progress
To see how the progress of a task is going, you will need to look at the Task directory for the task, e.g.: Task directory\Task0001 and its corresponding Task directory\Task0001\TasksUnderWork. You can there see how many *.tsk-files are still left (the sum of *.tsk-files in these 2 directories). If there is a finished.res-file in Task directory\Task0001, this task is finished and can be imported.

Import
At import, Novapoint Noise checks whether or not there are completely calculated tasks for this drawing. This is done by looking through all Task* subdirectories in Task directory for any finished.res file. If there is such a file, the program checks in Master.mst if the PC-name and terrain model name match the one currently open in Novapoint. If so, then all calculated tasks from this Task directory\Task*\Results will be imported to the drawing, without Current alternative being changed. Afterwards, all files are deleted from this Task directory\Task* directory.