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.
There are five simulation-related block names: rsw-params, phases-params, cct-params and vgleeble-params produce input cards, and rsw-results produces the output gallery after a weld run. Three further blocks cover material creation and flow-stress prediction: material-params, flow-stress-params, and flow-stress-results for the finished curves.
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. After you press the button it is replaced by a confirmation line naming what was submitted — "Heat treatment simulation submitted" with the material and time step, "CCT diagram submitted" with the material and the number of rates, "V-Gleeble Weld HAZ submitted" with the material — and the form is gone. To run a variation, ask for it again and confirm a new card.
- 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 do not render everywhere. On a shared conversation link the transcript is read-only, so the configuration cards do not appear. 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.
The card is titled Configure Simulation and 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 | Card clamps to 0.5–2.5 |
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 | V·mm | 1062.2 | Fixed and not editable in voltage mode; submitted to the tool as its voltage parameter |
force_pressure | MPa | 23.33 | Card accepts 1–50; a toggle lets you enter force in kN (0.5–15) instead |
weld_time | s | 0.42 | Duration of welding current; card clamps to 0–1 |
total_time | s | 3.0 | Includes hold and cooling; must be ≥ weld_time |
dt | s | 0.0002 | Solver timestep |
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 |
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 time step. 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 |
time_step | s | 0.2 | Card accepts 0.1–0.5 |
curve_points | [[time_s, temp], …] | [[0,860],[5,860],[10,20]] | At least two points required |
initial_phase_fractions | fraction | — | Ferrite, Pearlite, Bainite, Martensite, Austenite; must sum to 1 |
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, [0.1, 1, 10, 50, 100] °C/s |
hot-tensile, hot-compression | test_temp_c, strain_rate, max_strain | 800 °C, 1.0 s⁻¹, 0.5 |
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. Which modes your material can actually run depends on whether it has a bulk flow-stress table; see Virtual Gleeble and the Capability matrix.
rsw-results and the other blocks#
rsw-results is an output block, not an input one. It carries a JSON array of {"url": …, "label": …} entries which the chat renders as a thumbnail grid with labels such as "Nugget Evolution (animated)", "Temperature Contours" and "Nugget & HAZ Analysis". Clicking a thumbnail opens a full-screen viewer; the left and right arrow keys move between images and Escape closes it. After a successful weld run the agent is required to emit this block and a short summary, and forbidden from showing another rsw-params card.
Three non-simulation 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 with ASTM grain size, a bainite model choice (upper for continuous cooling, lower for isothermal), maximum plastic strain and temperature, plus optional composite phase fractions that must total 1.0; its button reads Calculate Flow Stress. flow-stress-results is the matching output block, carrying the computed per-phase and composite curves.
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.