Batch Processing

If you work with a large number of RD file data sets, chances are that you want to automate the post processing portion of your workflow. Currently RT-Post Process does not support batch processing from the GUI. This is something that we are working toward in an upcoming release of the software, bringing it into the core toolset. However, for the short term we can provide scripts and tools that can help users to get the results that they require in a simple manner.

This guide covers Windows based PC's, for the Linux environment please email our support team and they will get back to you with options for that platform

The article covers the following:

1. Preperation
2. Organising the files
3. Running the batch script
4. Customising the batch script
5. Customising the NCOM2CSV tool for CSV output

Preparation

 You will need access to the the following tools:

• Required - The latest version of NAVsuite, which will contain the post processing command line tool blended.exe which will process each file individually.
• Optional (for CSV output) - NCOM2CSV.exe
• Example batch script - RD2CSV.bat

You can download the last two here as a zip file. 

Adding required variables to the system path

The way the batch script works is it calls the tools mentioned above from the command line to act on the files in the directory in question. To do this it needs access to the location of those tools, this is what path variables allow us to do. 

1. Install NAVsuite if you haven't already done so
2. Find blendend and note its location. blended.exe is usually in either of these locations:
   32-bit operating systems - C:\Program Files\OxTS\RTPostProcess
   64-bit operating systems - C:\Program Files (x86)\OxTS\RTPostProcess 
3. Copy the example batch file to the same location as blended.exe
4. *Optional* Copy the NCOM2CSV tool to the same location as blenden.exe
5. Navigate to system properties:
   Windows 10 - Right click on the windows icon in the start bar and choose "System"
   Windows 7/8 - Go to "Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\System" in an explorer window
6. Select Environment Variables:
   
7. Select System Variables:
   
8. Click "Edit..." then go to the end of the path (it will be very long) and add the correct folder separated by a colon. (Windows 10 has a more user friendly view of these variables)
   
9. Select OK on all the dialog boxes

Note that the path will only be updated for new command prompt windows that are opened after the path has been changed. If you have a command prompt open then you will need to close it and open another one so that this change takes effect. 

Organising the files

The way the example batch file is written is that it expects to see a folder with only RD files in it. It will then process each one and place the resulting NCOM files (and CSV if the NCOM2CSV tool is also used) in the same folder.

So place all the files that you need to have processed into a folder in preperation for the batch process.

WARNING!: This tool will by default delete all files in the working folder except for the RD and output files

Running the batch script

1. Open a command window
2. Navigate to the folder with RD files in need of processing
3. Type in the name of the batch file
4. You will get a log file of what has been performed
5. You should also have NCOM files for each valid RD file
6. *Optional* with the NCOM2CSV tool, you will also have a CSV file with some default outputs (the same as RT Post Process will give you by default)

Customizing the batch script

blended.exe options

You can use blended with a number of options to get the files that you need. Some of the basic options that users may be interested in are:

• file="filename_without_extenion"
• cfg_exp=filename_without_extenion" - Extract the configuration files 
• -cook - prepare the file for forward and backward runs
• -comb - perform the combined processing run
• -sim - do not form the simulated processing run
• -fwd - perform the fwd processing run
• -bwd  - perform the backward processing run
• cook_cd - required field if you are cooking data

eg. blended file=!fnWithoutExt! path=*_ +proc +cook +comb +fwd +bwd cook_cd=!fnWithoutExt! >> RD2CSV.log

As blended, by default will run process with all options enabled, a "-" before the above options means do not perform that process. This is useful when you want only a particular processing run,for example just the simulated (as close to real time as possible) then you would run:

blended file=!fnWithoutExt! cfg_exp=!fnWithoutExt! -proc -cook -comb -sim -fwd -bwd >> RD2CSV.log

Batch file customization

The current script is written in the standard windows batch file scripting language. You can alter the script further to do exactly what you wish. These resources can help to customize the batch file further:

• List of command line tools available from cmd
• A good guide to batch file scripting

Customising the NCOM2CSV tool (CSV output)

If you wish to customize this utility to output specifically the measurements that you need then this then take a look at our decoder article here.