Instructions for new students/staff

There's a lot of information new students/staff working with Tim Tautges need to know. Many of those may already know lots of this stuff, but it never hurts to check just to be sure. There will be specific things individuals need to know based on their particular research project, but the things below are mostly of general interest.

The Hacker Within (THW) material: these will give you some starting tips on using and developing code on *NIX systems; most of my stuff is done on these types of systems.

• UNIX training bootcamp, http://hackerwithin.org/cgi-bin/hackerwithin.fcgi/wiki/UnixBootcamp#UnixTrainingBootcamp

• C++ bootcamp, http://hackerwithin.org/cgi-bin/hackerwithin.fcgi/wiki/CppBootCamp#CBootCamp

CUBIT:

• CUBIT code is located in various places, depending on whether you're at UW or ANL. Ask Tim or somebody else for locations. Executables are available for your machine, as long as you agree to the licensing provisions (basically, don't redistribute it)

• CUBIT Tutorial: basic and advanced tutorial notes are available from http://cubit.sandia.gov/tutorials.html (see link toward bottom of page); you should go through the basic and advanced presentations both. You'll need the geometry files and advanced files linked from there.

ITAPS:

• Much of the interface development work I do is associated with the ITAPS project; this acronym stands for Interoperable Tools for Advanced Petascale Simulations. My ITAPS work is described at http://trac.mcs.anl.gov/projects/ITAPS/wiki/, while the general project is located on the web at http://www.itaps.org.

MOAB:

• Skim through the MOAB wiki at http://trac.mcs.anl.gov/projects/ITAPS/wiki/MOAB.

• Download and read the short course notes, http://www.mcs.anl.gov/~tautges/downloads/sharp_moab_shortcourse.pdf. These notes include an introduction to the ITAPS project, which is strongly related to the interface work I do.

• Read the MOAB User's Guide, http://www.mcs.anl.gov/~tautges/downloads/MOAB-UG.pdf. This contains much more detailed information on using and developing in MOAB.

• Start looking at some code:

  • Download the code from svn (see the top of the MOAB wiki page for instructions)

  • Build the code on your favorite *NIX system; if you have trouble, see the build instructions linked from the bottom of the MOAB wiki.

  • Look over the various tools in the 'tools' subdirectory under the MOAB source. These are example applications which are fairly simple and do fairly well-defined things. Writing a new MOAB-based application is easiest done by modifying an existing tool.

CGM:

• Much the same as with MOAB, except the wiki is at http://trac.mcs.anl.gov/projects/ITAPS/wiki/CGM, and you'll need some sort of geometry engine (see build instructions linked at bottom of page).

Lasso:

• Similar to MOAB, see http://trac.mcs.anl.gov/projects/ITAPS/wiki/Lasso.