yade-dev team mailing list archive

[Jerome Duriez <duriez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

r2469 modified slightly the doc of 
Law2_ScGeom_NormalInelasticityPhys_NormalInelasticity, in this sense. I 
emphasize the fact that I mention (it was already the case before) a 
python script test which is supposed to illustrate the effects of the 
law. Me, I consider this as a very good mean to present the contact law.

Few remarks moreover :

- about the requirement you mention, I wonder if the "understand how 
they work" relates more to understanding of special features of 
different laws, or more to understanding of the general way to use any 
contact law (the definition of the InteractionLoop, with correct 
functors..). Corresponding needs in doc would not be the same.

- you point out the fact that non-academic people will more and more use 
Yade, and that therefore exhaustive documentation is required. For me 
this has to be seriously considered. I consider that financial and human 
required ressources are radically different between a research 
open-source code, and a general public software. And we all know on 
which side Yade is...
I do not wish to anybody the feelings I had when I began with Yade with 
no docs, but on the other side, it is difficult for me to imagine that 
someone gets engaged in a customer service for all his life, once he 
typed one "bzr commit" (few exageration here...)

To conclude, I agree with your idea of "experimental/undoc" feature 
(with the risk that this feature will dominate in Yade ?)

Jerome

Le 07/10/2010 19:37, Václav Šmilauer a écrit :
> Hi fellows,
>
> I received the following mail yesterday from a geological engineer:
>
>    
> > I recently found your software Yade on the internet,
> > which really arouse my interest. I downloaded it and
> > tried to learn it, but encountered with some questions,
> > and the most inconvenience is that there is no detailed
> > introduction about those constitutive laws used in Yade,
> > and I am wondering that if you could show me exactly what
> > kind of laws they are, the equations and detailed instruction
> > of them would help me to recogonize them and understand how
> > they work, and I would really appreciate that.
> >      
> What would you reply to such a question? (seriously)
>
> Looking at the documentation at
> https://www.yade-dem.org/sphinx/yade.wrapper.html#lawfunctor you might see
> that its state is miserable. Therefore I would like to ask authors of the
> respective contact laws to write documentation on them; it should mention
> at least:
>
> 1. The mathematical formulation of the model, or a reference to a paper
> which was _rigorously_ followed. Most models do not entail more than 10-20
> formulas and it is not such a big pain to write them.
> 2. For what kind of materials is the model supposed to be used.
> 3. Its limitations such as instabilities in corner cases, how well was it
> tested.
>
> Do not think documentation is unimportant. Since there are people outside
> academia using Yade (and there will be more of them in short time), then
> documentation is plain necessity. If there is agreement, I can add an
> "experimental" (or "undoc" or ...) feature (disabled by default), which
> would make compile stuff that is not documented or tested properly.
>
> I am not excluding myself, the concrete law is not much documented either.
>
> Please help Yade.
>
> Cheers, v
>
> _______________________________________________
> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~yade-dev
> Post to     : yade-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~yade-dev
> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>
>    

--
Jérôme Duriez
ATER Polytech' Grenoble - Laboratoire 3S-R
04.56.52.86.49 (ne pas laisser de messages sur le répondeur)