Tutorial 1-1

Tutorial 1 - Quick Start

Welcome to RocFall. This tutorial will demonstrate some of the basic

features of RocFall including:

 Creating/editing slopes
 Defining/editing seeders
 Assigning slope materials
 Animation tool
 Analysis tools

The finished product of this tutorial can be found in the

Tutorial 01 Quick Start.fal5 data file. All tutorial files installed with
RocFall can be accessed by selecting File > Recent Folders > Tutorials
Folder from the RocFall main menu.

Model
Start RocFall by selecting Programs  Rocscience  RocFall 5.0 
RocFall from the Windows start menu.

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RocFall automatically opens to a new blank document, which allows you

to begin creating a model immediately. If the RocFall application window
is not already maximized, maximize it now so the full screen space is
available for use.

Project Settings
The Project Settings dialog is used to configure the main analysis
parameters of the model. We do not need to customize the parameters in
this dialogue for this tutorial, but let’s take a look at the dialog.

Select: Project  Project Settings

In the General tab, set the engine to use the “Rigid Body” formulation.
Make sure metric units are selected.

Select the Stopping Conditions tab. Note that there are 4 parameters in
this tab and once one of these conditions are met, the rock will stop
moving. You can access the Help Menu for further information about the
stopping conditions.

Creating/Editing Slope
In RocFall, the slope can either be drawn manually with the cursor or by
inputting vertex coordinates. In this tutorial, we are going to input
coordinates to draw the slope. Remember that you must be in Design
mode to draw or edit the slope geometry.

Select: Slope  Edit coordinates

In this dialog, you can use the tools at the top of the dialog to edit the
datasheet. For example, you can add a new vertex to the slope by adding
a row and entering the coordinates of the new vertex. Use the coordinates
below:

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Note that in this analysis, the standard deviation for all the vertices is
set to zero since we are not going to consider any probabilistic variation.
Notice that from this dialog you can also import or export coordinates.
Press OK.

You can always open the Coordinates dialog by right clicking on the slope
and selecting “Edit Coordinates.” You can also manually move vertices or
delete them from the same menu.

Defining/Editing Seeder
In RocFall seeders determine the drop location for rocks.

Select: Seeder  Add Seeder

You can place a seeder at a location using the curser on the screen or by
entering the coordinates in the command line. The command line is
located at the bottom right hand side of the RocFall window and it is
commonly used for entering coordinates while creating the slope
geometry.

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Command Line

Enter 0.5, 0 in the command line. The “Seeder Properties” dialog should
appear.

In the “Seeder Properties” window select “Default Rock” from the shapes
list on the left hand side. Change the number of rocks to 50.

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You may edit the initial velocity of each shape in the “Seeder Properties”
dialog. In this dialog, you can set the mean, standard deviation, relative
minimum and maximum for the initial velocity to get the desired
distribution. For this tutorial, set the mean value for horizontal velocity
to 1.5 m/s and change the distribution to “Normal”. Set the standard
deviation to 0.15.

By default, the relative minimum and maximum is calculated to be three

times the standard deviation entered. You can always select the “3x std.
dev.” button to perform this calculation. Furthermore, you can change the
relative minimum and maximum values at any time if this calculation is
not desired.

Make sure the vertical velocity is 0 m/s with distribution set to “None”
and rotational velocity is set to 0 rad/s with distribution set to “None”. Set
the initial rotation to 0 rad/s with distribution set to “Uniform”.

You can always edit a seeder by right-clicking on the seeder and selecting
“Edit Seeder.” Now let’s view the rock properties.

Select: Seeder  Rock Library

The Rock Type Library dialog should appear.

In this dialog, we can change the mass, density and shape of each rock
set. We will use the default settings. Press OK.

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Assigning/Editing Slope Material

There are five default materials in the program that you can assign to
different sections of the slope. In this tutorial, we will be defining three
new materials.

Select: Slope  Slope Material Properties

The Slope Material Library dialog should appear.

Similar to the “Seeder Properties” dialog, the “Slope Material Library”

dialog allows you to change the distribution type and the distribution
parameters for each material. You can also add or remove materials.
Let’s define three new materials.

1. Select the Add button in the Material Editor dialog

2. Change the name of this new material to Type One, and enter the
properties given in the table below.

3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 to define two more new materials named Type
Two and Type Three. See the table below for their properties.

Name Normal Tangential Dynamic Rolling

Restitution Restitution Friction Friction
(mean | sd) (mean | sd) (mean | sd) (mean | sd)
Distribution Normal Normal None None
Type One 0.8 | 0.03 0.8 | 0.04 0.6 | 0 0.2 | 0
Type Two 0.7 | 0.03 0.8 | 0.04 0.6 | 0 0.2 | 0
Type Three 0.5 | 0.03 0.8 | 0.04 0.6 | 0 0.2 | 0

4. When you are finished entering all of the properties, select OK in the
Slope Material Library dialog.

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You can find more information about these parameters in the Help menu.
Press OK. You are now ready to assign the material properties to the
slope.

Select: Slope  Assign Slope Materials

Select “Type One” from the dialog.

Left-click on the first and third line segment from the left highlighted in
turquoise to set them to “Type One”.

Select “Type Two” and left-click on the second segment from the left
highlighted in pink, as shown.

Select “Type Three” and left-click on the last two segments highlighted in
blue, as shown.

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Notice that the color of the selected sections will change.

Results
Now that the model is ready, select the Results mode to solve the model.
In this mode, the analysis tools appear on the main toolbar and the rock
paths are shown on the slope.

Animation
One of the main advantages of RocFall 5.0 is the animation capability.
You can animate the rock in each path by right-clicking on the path and
selecting “Animate” from the list. The “Animation Result” dialog appears
on the screen and allows you to change the speed of animation and
control the animation progress.

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Analysis Tools
The analysis tools on the toolbar let you visualize the results of the model
in diagrams. “Graph Endpoints” and “Graph Data on Slope” and “Graph
Distribution” analyses are demonstrated in this tutorial.

Select: Graphs  Graph Endpoints

The horizontal location of endpoints is one of the most common and easily
understood results from a Rocfall analysis. In this analysis, we can view
the horizontal endpoint locations of each rock. Note that you can view the
information for the bars in the histogram by hovering the cursor over the
bars. Also notice that the diagram is opened in a new tab and that you
can switch to the “Plan View” tab to use other analyses tools.

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Go to the “Plan View” tab.

Select: Graphs  Graph Data on Slope

Kinetic Energy (Total, Translational, and Rotational), Velocity

(Translational and Rotational) and Bounce Height envelopes can also be
generated for Rocfall analyses.

The Graph Data on Slope dialog should appear. Select “Translational

Velocity” for Data to Plot and change the Value to Max, then select Plot
Data. Note that the diagram will appear in a new tab and you can switch
back to the “Plan View” tab to do other analyses.

Note that you can also specify a Percentile value to plot, since the Max is
generally conservative.

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Switch back to the “Plan View” tab.

Kinetic Energy (Total, Translational, and Rotational), Velocity

(Translational and Rotational) and Bounce Height distribution graphs
can be generated.

The distribution graphs show the distribution of results at X locations

(horizontal locations) along the slope.

Select: Graphs  Graph Distributions

In the Distribution Graph dialog select “Translational Velocity” for

Primary Data and select Plot data. The results should appear in a new
tab as a split view as shown.

As you select different locations on the slope model, the chart above will
update with the distribution results corresponding with the indicator
location.

For any graph, you can select “Chart in Excel” under the Graph menu or
right-click on the plot area and select “Plot in Excel” to view the data in
Microsoft Excel.

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You can also right-click any plot area and select “Copy Data” to copy the
raw data used to generate graphs to the Windows clipboard. From the
clipboard, the raw data can be pasted into word processing or spreadsheet
programs, for further analysis, or report writing. This allows you, for
example, to perform “custom” analyses that are not available with
Rocfall. For instance, you could copy the raw data associated with the
rock endpoints into your spreadsheet, sort the data and fit an unusual
probability distribution to the data.

Info Viewer
The Info Viewer option in the toolbar, displays a summary of all Rocfall
model parameters in its own view. This includes:

 Slope geometry
 Slope materials
 Seeder properties
 Simulation parameters
 Barrier and collector properties

Select: File  Info Viewer

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The Info Viewer information can be copied to the clipboard by right-

clicking in the view and selecting “Copy as Text”. From the clipboard, the
information can be pasted into word processing programs for report
writing.

The Info Viewer information can also be sent directly to your printer
using the Print option in the File menu.

NOTE that analysis results are NOT recorded in the Info Viewer.
However, as discussed earlier in this tutorial graph results can be copied
to the clipboard with the Copy Data option or exported to Microsoft Excel.

Saving RocFall Models

Before concluding this Quick Start Tutorial, we will save our Rocfall
model.

Select: File  Save

We will enter the name QuickTutorial.fal5 for our file.

To exit the program:

Select: File  Exit

This concludes the Quick Start tutorial. Enjoy using Rocfall!

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