Documentation
Parameter cards and blocks
What the configuration cards in the transcript are, how to confirm or adjust them, and every field each card carries with its units and defaults.
The card is the agent showing its work before it spends anything#
You ask for a spot weld on two 1.5 mm DP600 sheets, and instead of a result you get a small panel of fields — grades, thicknesses, current, weld time — with a Run Simulation button underneath. Nothing has run yet.
That panel is a parameter card. The agent produced it by writing a fenced block into its reply, tagged with a block name the chat recognizes, and the chat replaced the raw block with an interactive form. It is the last checkpoint between your sentence and a numbered, stored run: the moment you can see what the agent understood, correct it, and only then commit a solver to the work. The reasoning behind the gate is in How the conversation works.
Six block names produce input cards: rsw-params, rsw-config, phases-params, cct-params, vgleeble-params and material-params, plus flow-stress-params for flow-stress prediction. Two more are output blocks: flow-stress-results, which renders the finished curves, and rsw-results, which the chat now strips without rendering.
Confirming and adjusting#
The card fields are editable in place. Every card renders real inputs — number fields, dropdowns, toggles — and you change them by typing in the card, not by describing the change in chat. Pressing the button then posts the finished configuration into the conversation as a JSON message beginning with a fixed phrase, for example Run RSW simulation with full configuration: or Generate CCT diagram with configuration:. The parameters that actually ran therefore stay visible in the transcript.
Three things follow from that design:
- A card submits once. Pressing the button marks the card ✓ Submitted, relabels the button to Submitted, and leaves the card in the transcript as the record of what you confirmed. The two RSW cards also disable every input; the heat-treatment, CCT and V-Gleeble cards leave their fields editable but no longer submit them, so an edit after submission changes nothing. To run a variation, ask for it again and confirm a new card. The flow-stress card is the exception that collapses: it is replaced by a one-line confirmation naming the grain size and bainite model.
- Buttons are inert while a turn is streaming or while the chat is reconnecting to a background run. Wait for the current turn to finish.
- Anything the card does not expose, you change in words. The heat-treatment card, for example, shows the temperature curve as read-only text. To change it, say what you want and the agent emits a fresh card with your values pre-filled:
Run a heat treatment on DC04: heat to 900 °C, hold 5 seconds, then cool to room temperature.
Cards also behave differently outside a live session. On a shared conversation link the transcript is read-only: the four simulator cards still render, so a reader can see exactly what was confirmed, but every input is disabled and the run button does nothing. The material-params and flow-stress-params cards are not rendered there at all. If a simulator is switched off for your workspace, the card is replaced by a line reading that the simulator is disabled and to ask your admin to enable it.
rsw-params — always shown, never skipped#
Resistance spot welding is the one simulator that can never be launched straight from typed text. The agent is instructed to show the rsw-params card first for any spot-welding request, and explicitly to still show it when you already stated every value — your numbers are pre-filled, but you confirm them. run_rsw_simulation is called only after you press the button.
rsw-params can render either of two cards, and which one you get depends on what the block states. If it states anything beyond force/pressure, weld time and total time — which in practice it always does — you get the full Configure simulation card described below. A block carrying only those three values degrades to a legacy three-field card titled RSW simulation parameters, which accepts pressure up to 500 MPa and defaults total time to 0.5 s. A fence tagged rsw is treated exactly like one tagged rsw-params; a fence tagged rsw-config always mounts the full card, whatever it states.
The full card groups its fields into Top Plate, Bottom Plate, EM Control, Mechanical, Microstructure and Experimental Mechanics, with Weld Time and Total Time at the bottom and a geometry preview beside the form on wide screens.
| Field | Unit | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
steel_grade | — | DC04 | Applies to both plates unless overridden |
steel_grade_top, steel_grade_bottom | — | DC04 | One of the 20 RSW-supported grades; see Resistance spot welding |
thickness_top, thickness_bottom | mm | 1.0 | Accepted range 0.3–5.0; invalid drafts stay visible and block confirmation |
coating_top, coating_bottom | true/false | true | Zinc coating on that plate |
em_bc_type | current or voltage | current | Toggle in EM Control |
current_kA | kA | 7.0 | Entered in amperes on the card, limited to 1000–12000 A |
voltage_V | mV | 1062.2 | Historical key carrying raw solver mV (1.0622 V physically); editable from 1–100,000 and submitted as voltage |
force_pressure | MPa | 23.33 | Full card accepts 1–200; the simple parameter card accepts 1–500; force mode accepts 0.5–15 kN |
weld_time | s | 0.42 | Accepted range 0.01–1.0; invalid drafts block confirmation |
total_time | s | 3.0 | Accepted range 0.01–25.0, and must be ≥ weld_time |
dt | s | 0.0002 | Solver timestep; accepted range 0.00001–0.01 |
micro_enabled | true/false | false | Microstructure phase tracking |
mechanical_enabled | true/false | false | Experimental linear thermoelastic contact coupling |
custom_composition_top, custom_composition_bottom | list of {element, value} | — | Per-plate chemistry riding on the chosen base grade |
custom_composition_label_top, custom_composition_label_bottom | — | — | Display name for that chemistry |
session_material_version_top, session_material_version_bottom | run version | null | Reuse a plate material card from an earlier run |
The 25 s ceiling on total_time is not arbitrary. One weld is allowed 250,000 solver steps, and 25 s is where that budget lands at the solver's minimum step. A longer run is refused before anything is reserved, with a message naming the budget and telling you to shorten total_time. Asking for a coarser dt does not buy much: only the welding-current phase is charged at the step you request, because cooling is adaptive and the budget charges the whole post-weld phase at the 0.0001 s minimum.
Selecting a session material for either plate forces the microstructure toggle on and locks it. Enabling Experimental Mechanics prints a warning that plastic flow stress is not active in the current solve, including flow stress from an applied Phases material card. The flow_stress_model field is a deprecated compatibility input — the card always submits the default and the active mechanics always uses the reviewed linear path, so changing it changes nothing.
phases-params — heat treatment#
Rendered as Heat Treatment Configuration. Editable: the material and the cooling rate. The temperature curve and any composition overrides are shown as a read-only summary such as 0s → 860°C, 5s → 860°C, 10s → 20°C.
| Field | Unit | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
material_id | — | — | Lowercase built-in id, only when you named a grade |
material_label + composition | — / wt% | — | Used instead of material_id when a custom or workspace material is active |
curve_points | [[time_s, temp], …] | [[0,860],[5,860],[10,20]] | At least two points required |
| Cooling rate (card field) | °C/s | read from curve_points | Card accepts 0.01–1000; edits rewrite the final descending segment |
initial_phase_fractions | fraction | — | Ferrite, Pearlite, Bainite, Martensite, Austenite; must sum to 1 |
Cooling rate is not a key in the block. The card reads it from the final descending segment of curve_points, and typing a new rate rewrites that segment in place, keeping the austenitising temperature, the hold and the end temperature. A cycle that does not end by cooling — an isothermal hold, for instance — shows no cooling-rate field at all.
There is no time-step input on this card. The step is derived from the cycle, aiming at roughly 400 steps and clamped to 0.01–5 s, and shown as read-only text: Step size: auto — 0.025s over 10s. A phases-params block must not carry time_step; if one is pre-filled it is stripped and replaced at submission. To change the step, change the cycle.
Curve temperatures are unit-detected by magnitude: if the highest temperature in the curve is 1000 or below it is read as Celsius, above that it is read as Kelvin. Keep example peaks at or below 1000 °C. Details and outputs are in Heat treatment.
cct-params — CCT diagram#
Rendered as CCT Diagram Configuration, with a material picker, a comma-separated rates field and two temperature fields. The button reads Generate CCT Diagram.
| Field | Unit | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
rates | °C/s | [0.1, 1, 10, 50, 100] | Card accepts 1–10 rates; each must be positive |
start_temp_c | °C | 860 | Card accepts 600–1200 and requires start > final |
final_temp_c | °C | 20 | Card accepts 0–500 |
material_id | — | — | Or material_label + composition for an active custom material |
There is no time-step field: the sweep chooses its own step per rate, aiming at roughly 1 °C per step within a 0.1–10 s bound. The sweep runs exactly the rates you list — nothing is added around a transformation nose. See CCT and TTT.
vgleeble-params — virtual Gleeble#
Rendered as V-Gleeble Configuration. The first field is the test mode, and the rest of the card changes to match it. The button reads Run V-Gleeble Test.
Mode (test_mode) | Card fields | Defaults |
|---|---|---|
cct | start_temp_c, end_temp_c, cooling_rates | 860 °C, 20 °C, [0.5, 1, 10, 50, 100] °C/s |
hot-tensile, hot-compression | test_temp_c, strain_rate, max_strain | 800 °C, 1.6 s⁻¹, 0.2 |
haz | peak_temp_c, dt85 | 1350 °C, 15 s |
isothermal | hold_temp_c, hold_time | 700 °C, 60 s |
satoh | peak_temp_c | 900 °C |
hot-stamping, custom | none — "Uses built-in defaults for this mode." | — |
dt85 is the cooling time from 800 °C to 500 °C in seconds. The solver-wide cooling envelope is 0.5–1000 °C/s, hot-deformation temperature is 20–1200 °C, strain rate is 0.001–500 s⁻¹, maximum strain is 0.01–1.0, and total duration is at most 10,800 s. The optional time_step is a 0.001–1 s maximum; the solver reduces it automatically to keep each thermal change at or below 10 °C. These are material-independent limits. Which deformation modes a material can actually run still depends on whether it resolves a bulk flow-stress surface; see Virtual Gleeble and the Capability matrix.
rsw-results, and what actually draws the figures#
rsw-results is an output block, not an input one, and it is the one block on this page that no longer renders. After a weld run the agent is still required to emit it verbatim, carrying a JSON array of {"url": …, "label": …} entries — but the chat strips the block from the message and discards its payload. Nothing is lost: the figure grid you see under the message is assembled independently, from the artifacts the tool result reports for that run.
That grid labels the animation Nugget Evolution, alongside Temperature Contours, Nugget & HAZ Analysis and the other stored plots. Clicking a thumbnail opens a full-screen viewer; the left and right arrow keys move between images and Escape closes it. The Results tab of the simulation panel shows the same figures for a run still in progress, where the live gallery event uses the longer label "Nugget Evolution (animated)" — the suffix exists only there and in the discarded block, which is why the agent's prose may use it while the thumbnail under the message does not.
After a successful weld run the agent is also required to give a short text summary, and is forbidden from showing another rsw-params card.
material-params and flow-stress-params#
Two further blocks use the same mechanism.
material-params renders a Custom material panel with an editable name, a read-only base grade, per-element wt% inputs and Fe shown as the balance, offering Activate for this session and Save to workspace for future use — described in Using your own chemistry.
flow-stress-params renders Flow-stress configuration. Its first control is a Material selector, followed by required ASTM grain size (6–15), a bainite model choice (Upper — continuous cooling or Lower — isothermal), maximum plastic strain (0.01–1.0, default 0.2) and temperature, plus an optional composite phase-fractions section with a live Total: readout that must reach 1.0 if you use it at all. The button reads Calculate flow stress. flow-stress-results is the matching output block, carrying the computed per-phase and composite curves, and it does render in the transcript.
If a card ever fails to render and you see the raw fenced JSON instead, that is a rendering problem rather than a configuration error — see Common problems.