5.1 Basic usage

FieldConvert expects at least one input specification (such as a session file and its corresponding field file) and one output specification. These are specified on the command line as

FieldConvert in1.xml in2.fld out.dat

These can be combined with a processing module by adding the -m command line option. There can be more than one module specified, and they can appear anywhere in the command line arguments, although the order of execution is inferred from their order in the command line. For example, the command

FieldConvert in1.xml -m module1 in2.fld -m module2 out.dat

causes in1.xml and in2.fld to be read, followed by the module1 processing module, the module2 processing module, and finally output to the out.dat Tecplot file.

5.1.1 Input formats

FieldConvert supports XML and FLD-format files as produced by Nektar++. It also supports the reading of data files from two external spectral element codes: Semtex² and Nek5000³ . These files can be directly converted to Nektar++ format files by using the command

FieldConvert input.fld output.fld

Note that even though the .fld extension is typically associated with Nektar++ files, FieldConvert can automatically identify Semtex and Nek5000 input field files.

To use these files in a simulation, or to post-process the results of a simulation, an appropriate mesh must also be defined in the Nektar++ XML format. NekMesh can be used to convert these input files to XML, as outlined in section 4.