Geometry missing with VTK disabled - bug or feature?

MFiX
#1

Due to a local configuration issue that I’m still sorting with out IT team, I’m having to do most of my work on a remote CentOS workstation with VTK disabled (in GUI mode). When I’m building a model from the ‘blank’ template I can enable VTK and see the geometry. I then close mfix and reload with -k (VTK disabled) so I can run the model without the config errors when it tries to load up the graphics.

On opening the model (or any of the demo models) with VTK disabled, I find that the geometry list is empty, even though I’ve just saved the file with the complete geometry present. I also cannot add any geometry items - clicking on the geometry button doesn’t bring up the list of available options. Closing and reloading the file with VTK enabled brings back the items in the geometry list as if nothing had happened.

Is this a bug with the -k option, or is this necessary behaviour to allow the -k option to work properly?

I’m running v21.4 but reverting to 21.3.2 has the same behaviour. I’ve tried uninstalling and reinstalling MFiX with no change in behaviour.

Thanks for any thoughts!

#2

Hi Alan -

it looks like you found an issue with the -k flag. It’s provided for convenience, and is not tested regularly - so this issue with the geometry list escaped our notice. I’m not sure how feasable it is to get the geometry list working with -k - if this is not too hard we’ll do this for the next release.

Can you use something like ‘vglrun’ to get around the problem with the remote workstation? (This is how we run remote jobs at NETL).

– Charles

#3

Hi Charles,

Thanks for the quick reply - looks like I’m setting things up via the console next time I’m in the office…

re the VTK issue, I can see from internal documentation that some users have vglrun set up, so I’ll discuss this with the IT team when I reach the top of the help queue!

Best regards,
Alan