Designing your wind turbine

1 Wind turbine templates

When you open Ashes, the startpage will show a list of template models that will make it easy to get started. Here you can choose what type of support structure you want to use as a starting point. 

When starting from a template model, Ashes will: 
  - Create all the parts of the model from a set of default parameters. 
  - Set analysis parameters to values that are suited for analyzing the chosen template (see Analysis parameters).
  - Wind, waves and other external loads are set to a simple case, such as 10 m/s wind, 5 m wave height. 
  - The initial starting point of the simulation is a turbine in its operating state (see Initial conditions).

The templates are based on the NREL 5 MW reference turbine. You can access them in the Starting window.

2 Parameterized parts

Most of the model's parts can be configured by changing a set of parameters These are listed in the Parts chapter and refer to both Environmental conditions (such as Wind, Waves, Tides, etc) and to physical parts of the wind turbine (such as Rotor, Blades, Mooring lines, etc). All parts have some parameters that can be modified from the Simulation window. To see the parameters corresponding to a part, check the corresponding part in the Parts section. This list of parameters is also accessible from Ashes by pressing F1 and then clicking on the corresponding part or parameter.

3 Importing and exporting parts

If you want to model parts that can't be fully created from a parametrization, Ashes allows you to create some parts from user-defined data, e.g. from a file. A typical use-case is to import a user-defined support section, such as the structure of a tower section or a floating platform. 

Ashes uses several different file formats when exporting/importing, depending on the type of part. The workflow for creating a fresh file to work on, that is correctly formatted is to: 
  1. Click on the part in the Parts tree. In the Parameters pane, click the Export icon . 
  2. Select a location for the exported file and click Save
  3. Open the file in a text editor and change the relevant sections. 
  4. Click on the import icon  to import the modified file. 
You can find example files for some formats in the Documents/Ashes x.y.z/Example files/, which can be opened from the menu: Help | Open Examples folder. The files contains documentation and comments that should make it easy to understand--if you need more information, see File formats. 

After you import a part from file, it will be stored in the project, meaning that you won't need the original file to open the project (e.g. on another computer, or when sharing the model in the cloud). If you make changes to the file after you imported it, you must import it again for the changes to come into effect. 

We recommend the free Notepad++ text editor (https://notepad-plus-plus.org/), since it has many useful features, such as text highligthing (choose the INI format) and adjustable column/tab widths. The built-in notepad editor in Windows should not be used, as it has quirks with file encodings and line endings. See 'Text editor tips and tricks'.