Path Translation Rules

"Path Translation Rules" (PTR) are actually always required, even in networks where all computers share the same operating system. There, you need them if you trigger jobs with a local path to a scene. In so-called heterogenous networks it is a little more difficult, because different operating systems also use different path notations. Without these path translations rules it is impossible for RealFlow to identify the directories where the simulation data are stored. The result is that the node cannot contribute to a simulation.

Let's assume you have a small network with three computers: 2 with Windows operating systems and 1 with OS X. The correct PTR depend on the computer where your RealFlow GUI application is running, because the location of RealFlow plays an important role. If you have more than one license on different computers you can choose from which machine you want to trigger a network simulation, but this also means that you have to specify path translation rules for each RealFlow application as well. With just a single RealFlow GUI license you only have to do this once.

To establish RealFlow's network simulation feature, please connect the computers: login to the machine with the “Job Manager” – this has to be done for each machine in your network. If you are not logged in, the computers cannot see each other and the simulation will fail.

There are a number of things you should consider when adding PTRs:

• When you are sending a job rom RealFlow to the “Job Manager” it tries to find a PTR from the “Preferences” panel. You can see the entire path when you click on the “Edit Job” function in the manager's web interface (http://ip_of_the_computer_with_the_job_manager:8080). If the “Path Translation Rules” are empty, something went wrong.

• For each job that has been created with the “Send to Job Manager” button in RealFlow's GUI application, a Python script will be created. This script also contains an embedded PTR. That is the reason why you cannot edit the rules directly inside the web interface. You have to alter the preferences instead and send the job to the manager again.

• A “Job Node” is limited to a single job and you have to manually send the jobs to the available nodes. This is done with the “Send to Job Manager” button of an IDOC. To speed up this process you can multi-select the desired IDOCs and then press the button to distribute your jobs.

• You can add as many PTRs as you want and RealFlow will always try to find a matching rule. This means that you can freely configure your systems and store the projects on different volumes and locations. As long as there is a (correct) PTR, the simulation will consider all active nodes.

• Even if a node is not available, e.g. because of an “unknown path” error, a simulation will not necessarily fail. As long as there is still at least one active node everything will be simulated. If you get such an error, please go to the “Job Manager's” web interface and edit the job with the “unknown path” error. There you will find all specified prefixes/PTR and you can check whether these rules are correct or not.

• Unfortunately it is not possible to cover each and every exception and particular network path location here, and it might happen that you have to change the paths, number of (back)slashes or “Prefix” settings slightly to get everything running.

Configuration A

In the first example, the following configuration is used:

The “Job Manager” can also be installed on any other machine – it is only important that the IP under “Manager Location” points to this computer and the “Job Nodes” can see it in the network. Under Windows there is the “Documents and Settings” folder – this can also be seen as your home directory. In this example, the RealFlow projects are stored in this directory, but any other path is valid as well. The question is: “Which path do computers have to follow to reach the folder given above?” To get the path for “Computer 1”, one possibility is to use Window's "Explorer" or "Internet Explorer" and type in the path to the desired folder. Please use the normal slash to separate the directories. If the path is valid, the folder's content pops up in the form of a new window. Now, the path can be used under "Prefix"

As you can see you do not have to create a PTR for the second windows machine (“Computer 2”), because it uses exactly the same rule to find the destination folder. A Mac's operating system, on the other hand, uses a completely different notation and you have to specify a volume (if you have problems finding the correct path, please read the “PTR - Path Finder: From Mac to Windows” chapter):

Configuration B

This is the configuration for the second example:

In the second example, the OS X computer (192.168.1.17) holds the RealFlow GUI license and the “Job Manager”. So, all the PTRs have to be defined from the “perspective” of this computer. The PTR for the OS X machine itself is simply the standard path to your folder or volume where you store all your RealFlow scenes by default:

Since there is only one Mac computer, the “Mac” rule is exactly the same as the prefix:

For windows, things are different, because what you have to enter here is the path that a Windows computer has to follow until it reaches the “scenes” folder on the Mac's “RealFlow” volume. The notation is of particular importance, because it contains backslashes:

For our example, there has got to be only one PTR for both Windows nodes, because the address, specified under “Windows”, is the same for “Computer 1” and “Computer 2”. In other words: with the given path you will be able to reach the OS X volume from each Windows computer. If you have trouble finding out the correct path, please read the “PTR - Path Finder: From Windows to Mac” chapter. Like in the first example, a particular volume (and sometimes a folder as well) can only be used with appropriate reading and writing permissions. Please check these permissions if you cannot access a volume or folder.

Configuration C

Here, a Linux machine will be added. Under Linux, the PTRs are very similar to OS X and you have to work again with mounted volumes. The main difference to the Mac is that OS X users usually mount network drives through the “Finder” application, e.g. with the “Go to server...” option. Linux users, on the other hand, can mount a volume wherever they want, but in most cases the mounting point is at “/mnt/volume_name/folder”. In this example the new computer is a node and “Computer 1” is running the “Job Manager”. According to the given information this would be the path translation rule: