Getting Started
Hi!
This page is intended as a help to people who are new to Daisy, and want to learn to use it by self
study.
The Tutorial
First, print out the Daisy Tutorial.
It will tell you to download a command line executable for MS Windows or GNU/Linux i386, the parameter library, a sample weather file, and if you are using MS
Windows, a graphical log file
viewer for Daisy log files.
The tutorial describes a sample simulation in details, as well as well
as giving information about how to perform more advanced tasks. Read
the description of the example, and skim the rest. You can read the
relevant sections again when you need it.
The Reference Material
There are two papers available online describing the physical and
mathematic models used by Daisy, a recent draft paper available as PDF or MS Word 2000, an the original Daisy documentation (a PDF
containing scanned pages). The old paper is more complete, but the
new paper describes some processes added later. While not strictly
necessary, you will probably want to skim both to get a feel of what
kind of models are used, and their limitations. Especially if you are
doing more advanced stuff.
The program itself is described in the Daisy Program Reference Manual, which is
always complete and up to date. You will need to refer to it when
modifying the parameters of any of the models used by Daisy, but it is
rather large and changes frequently. Thus, we suggest you print out the
list of content and the first introductory part of the manual, and
skim through the introduction.
The Exercises
Finally, we suggest you download and print out our Daisy exercises. They teach you step by
step how to use Daisy for your own simulations.
MS Windows users will save a lot of time if they install TextPad and configure it as described
before starting with the exercises. Unix users will want Emacs instead.
What next?
If you have problems getting this to work, or have problems writing
setup-files for your own simulation, then please tell us so we can help, and
perhaps clarify the documentation. If the unlikely should happen and
you manage to use Daisy without encountering any problems, we would
like even more to hear from you, and what you used Daisy for. Knowing
someone finds Daisy useful is nice.
If Daisy as-is is insufficient for your needs, but it is close enough
that you want to modify the code to make it sufficient, you are free
to do so. The source code in C++ is
available. You will also find a couple of papers and a DLL on
the main page. It is a good idea to contact
us first though. We have build the code with various compilers in the
past, so we can provide help for how to make it work with your build
system. And while the source code corresponds to the latest
executable, the papers and dll's are generally out of date.
Have fun!
The Daisy Project
<daisy@dina.kvl.dk>