Control the Format of the FV-UNS Files

The combined file format writes an individual file for each time step of results while the split file format writes the mesh into one file and the results into a different file. For transient applications with stationary mesh, that is, no mesh motion, it is unnecessary to continually rewrite the mesh to disk at each step. This is an example where writing a split file can save significant amounts of disk space and also time when reading transient data into AcuFieldView.

The specification of the type of file, split versus combined, is controlled by the -fvopt or -fieldview_options command line option. By default, this option is set to "classical", which writes a single file for each step that contains both the mesh and the results. Specifying -fvopt split writes the mesh and results into separate files. For example: acuTrans -out -to fieldview -fvopt split.

The mixingElbow_step000016.fv contains the results of the simulation at the 16th time step, while the mixingElbow_mesh.fv file contains the mesh. For transient simulations where multiple steps are requested, AcuTrans will only write the mesh file that corresponds to the first time step. Therefore, this option should be used cautiously with deforming mesh applications.