10 GeoStudio Tips in 10 Minutes

Hopefully, one of these tips will be new to you and will improve your experience and workflow in Geostudio.

Overview

Video Transcript

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<v Keely>Hello everyone.</v>

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My name is Keeley and I’m a research scientist

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with the GeoStudio group here at Seequent.

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Today, I thought I’d share with you

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some of our favorite tips and tricks.

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Hopefully, at least one of these 10 tips will be new to you

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and improve your experience and workflow in GeoStudio.

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So, let’s get right into it.

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The first tip has to do with the right-click context menu.

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At any time that you are working

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in the GeoStudio project Explorer window,

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you do not have to go to the defined project window

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to add geometry or child analysis,

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delete or rename and analysis or geometry branch,

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or queue an analysis for solving in the solve manager.

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When sketching your geometry in 2D,

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you can use your keyboard

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to activate many CAD light drawing tools.

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For example, while in the draw region mode,

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I can use Control + R on my keyboard,

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which activates the CAD drawing tool in the bottom toolbar.

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Here, the absolute XY coordinate can be entered.

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Alternatively, I could have entered a relative offset,

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relative length and angle, relative X or Y offset and angle,

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or a geometry point ID.

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While drawing, the Shift key can be held down

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to limit movement in the horizontal

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or vertical direction.

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The Control button can be held down

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to snap to an existing geometry line

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to ensure that a tight fit exists between regions.

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Lastly, C on my keyboard will close the region

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or exit the drawing mode.

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GeoStudio has the ability to copy and paste materials

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and functions.

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If you want to include some of the same materials

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from a previous file created for the same site,

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you can copy and paste the materials

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from the previous file directly

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into your new GeoStudio project.

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Take this file as an example.

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I can drag a box over the materials

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or hold down the Control button

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and click on the desired materials and the list

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from the old file.

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I can right-click in the list box and choose Copy.

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Now, when I opened the defined materials window

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in my new GeoStudio file,

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I can right-click in the list box and choose Paste.

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All materials, including their defined, parameters

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and functions will be copied over to the new file.

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Boundary functions and climate functions

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for the land climate boundary condition

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can also be copied from other GeoStudio files

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in a similar manner.

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While working with parameters and graphs in GeoStudio,

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you can modify the visible units on your screen

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by right-clicking in either the parameter edit box

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or in the graphing window.

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For example,

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I can change my poor water pressure units

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in this hydraulic conductivity function from kilo pascals

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to pounds per square foot.

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Alternatively, I can change the hydraulic conductivity

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from meters per second to feet per second.

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The data fields automatically convert to the new unit.

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While in the draw materials menu,

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you can apply the same material to a region

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in multiple analyses and geometry

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by activating the apply to multiple analyses toggle.

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This opens up a list box for you to choose

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which analysis and geometries you would like the material

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to be applied to.

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The same action can be used

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in the draw boundary conditions window.

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The finite element mesh

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and GeoStudio is automatically created

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when you add a material to a geometry.

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You can drag a box over the geometry objects,

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or hold down your Control button on your keyboard

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to click on individual objects

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to highlight them in the draw mesh properties window.

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If you want to modify the mesh properties,

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adjust a line, point or region,

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you can change the dropdown menu here.

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This allows you to modify the element size, element type

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or add mesh constraints to your finite element mesh in 2D.

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The Remove Constraints button can be used

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to remove all constraints

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from the finite element mesh returning

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to the default mesh using the defined global element length.

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If at any time your analysis stops solving

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in the middle of the defined duration,

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you can toggle off all other analyses and choose Solve

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from last time step from the dropdown menu

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on the Start button.

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This will allow the solver to start solving

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from the last save time step in the file.

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If you have a large file or multiple files

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that you are solving,

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there is also the option to solve

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from the command prompt window.

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Geo command can be used to automate the solving,

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upgrading, and report generation

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for many project files sequentially.

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In command prompt,

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you would ensure that your path environment variable

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includes the folder where GeoStudio exists.

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Then, you would type in GeoCmd.exe

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with the file name and location, and the analysis name.

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For more information on the Geo Command executable.

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please refer to the tutorial video on our YouTube channel.

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In order to review and interpret your results,

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you will likely need to create multiple graphs

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in draw graph.

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While working in 2D,

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the custom graph locations can be used to specify locations

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on the model domain that are not geometry objects.

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This could be used to choose a specific node

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or element in the mesh,

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holding down the mouse button and dragging a box,

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allows you to choose a number of nodes or elements

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or holding down the Shift key on your keyboard,

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allows you to highlight nodes along the specified line.

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As a final tip,

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I thought I’d share with you my three favorite hotkeys

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in GeoStudio.

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The first one is Control + Z as this can be used

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to undo the last action you made in GeoStudio,

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whether it was drawing a line,

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deleting a data point in a function and so on.

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The next one is F1,

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the F1 button on your keyboard

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will open the GeoStudio help topic for any window

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that you have open.

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For example,

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if I have the draw graph window open and I hit F1,

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the draw graph help topic is opened in the GeoStudio Help.

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Lastly, if at any time you are missing a window,

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such as the solve manager disappearing,

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you can use Alt + W + E to reset your GeoStudio windows

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to the default layout.

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This will not modify your analysis or results,

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but will simply return all windows

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in the GeoStudio user interface to the default view.

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I have now shared with you 10 of our favorite tips

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and tricks for using GeoStudio.

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I hope you have found these helpful

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in your GeoStudio experience and workflow.

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Thank you for watching.