Novapoint Noise Powerpack

This is an extra application for Novapoint Noise. It makes it possible to do the noise calculations without having AutoCAD running. It also makes it possible to use available PC-capacity in the local network. This means it can multiply the calculation speed! There is noe limit on how many PCs can help with calculations.

Powerpack consist of:

• Some functions in Novapoint Noise, to export and import calculations. These are included in the Novapoint Noise license.
• An application that can run as a normal program or as a screen saver, to run the calculations. This is entirely license free and can be installed on as many PCs as wanted. The total installation is only a couple of MB and the application uses no resources when not active.

See Installation.

When the screen saver is installed and set correctly, it will check the Task directory for tasks as long as it is activated. The screen will be black, with only a few lines of status information with varying colors sliding around on the screen.

Notice that for the screen to be activated, the user must be logged into the PC. It can well be in the status of “Locked” (with or without password) achieved through <ctrl>+<alt>+<del> or a timeout.

Export
During export, there is created a new directory under Task directory. On this the terrain model is copied (*.tmg, *.gdd, *.gdh, *.gdi and *.gdn) together with a file called Master.mst, containing all input data of the calculation. Then these files are compressed into a zip file and the original files are deleted.

Then there are created a number of files called *.tsk, each containing information on 10 calculation points.

Calculation
During calculation, the application checks Task directory to find remaining tasks. If it finds a task, it moves it to the subdirectory TasksUnderWork. Then it copies the zip file (if necessary, and decompresses it) and the task file to Local directory. After that, the calculations start. When all points in the task are calculated, a *.res file with the results is copied to Task directory\Results and the original *.tsk file is deleted from TasksUnderWork.

Then the application checks if there are more tasks. If not, it creates a file called Finished.res in Task directory and deletes the zip file.

If a calculation is interrupted, the *.tsk file under work will remain on Task directory\TasksUnderWork for renewed calculation.

Import
During import, Novapoint Noise checks to see if there are any finished tasks on Task directory for this drawing. This is done by searching for the Finished.res file. All calculated results are then imported to the drawing, without changing Current alternative.

Cleanup
The application does some cleanup of used directories. There should never be many directories left neither on Task directory or Local directory.

See Version_history.