Get started with Pencilroads

Pencilroads is a collaborative and compute intensive platform for engineering workflows. Where a workflow can be (series and/or parallel) tasks like preprocessing, running simulations and postprocessing them.

What is the problem?

Engineers out there!, you start designing a magnificent new product, your thermodynamics skills are in harmony with your aerodynamics craftmanship, you mastered the tools of Excel and an aerolastic simulation black box tool. With a fresh coffee and a kick-off meeting done, you are willing to start crunching the numbers of this top secret project with your fellow engineer colleagues. Then....

I hope it does not break!

"It (a tool) does not work in my computer"

"It took me at least a day to set it up in my computer!"

I hope I could run these simulations faster

"I will queue my jobs, hopefully, it will be done by the end of week"

"Wait many of them failed! I have to pick and run the next batch"

"I have to export this data so my colleague can help me resolve this error"

I hope I don't need to write a report (again)

"How does this compare to the previous loop?"

"Copy/paste tables and timeseries to a Word document, it is boring!"

Why Pencilroads?

Pencilroads is a platform that aims to solve these problems by providing an easy to use, collaborative and compute intensive environment for engineering workflows. Pencilroads allows you to focus on what matters the most, the engineering problem at hand.

I hope it does not break!

The tools are yours!, you have a tool for pre or post?, you can use it in Pencilroads. You define the recipe of tasks that make up your workflow. You can share it with your colleagues and they will be able to run it without any setup hassle.

I hope I could run these simulations faster

You heard about the "cloud"? that entity of infinite compute power,infinite storage and infinite cost? Well, Pencilroads allows you to run your workflows in that monster, we deal with the monster so you don't have to. You just focus on your engineering problem.

I hope I don't need to write a report again

You make a template, you have a report. The results of your workflows are stored in a structured way so your template is fill-in without you asking for it. Structured also means that you can easily compare different workflow runs.

Your first workflow run

1. Step 1:

   Clone a demo project to your account. Demo projects:

   • NREL 5MW Onshore
2. Step 2:

   Download a model file and change one value or add a new line. Then upload it again, replacing the old file. The replacement will trigger a workflow run.

3. Step 3:

   Check the workflows tab to see the progress of your workflow run.