This chapter describes possible problems that may occur when you work with Fenix+ 3 application.
Problems That May Occur When You Start the application
When you start the application, nothing happens
Cause:
- Microsoft .NET Framework 4.8 runtime is not installed correctly or missing.
You must reinstall the framework. For this, do the following:
- Open the Add or Remove Programs window.
- Delete (if installed) the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.8 client profile.
- Download and reinstall Microsoft .NET Framework 4.8 x86/x64 client package.
When starting the application, the message “Please insert the USB key into the USB connector” appears
Cause 1:
- The USB key is not installed in the USB connector or the USB connector is not working.
Solution 1:
- Install the USB key into a working USB port on your PC.
When working with the Fenix+ 3 application, you must remember that a lost USB key cannot be restored or replaced unless the key is stolen or destroyed by fire. A broken USB key must be replaced with a new one. For all questions related to restoring and replacing a USB key contact the developer. For more information, see Contact Information.
Cause 2:
- The USB key driver is not installed correctly or is missing.
Solution 2:
You must reinstall the USB key driver manually.
To reinstall the USB key driver, you must double-click on the executable file InstWiz3.exe and follow the instructions of the installation wizard. The installation wizard executable file is located in the Drivers directory of the program installation directory. For details, see Installation Directory and Location of Program Files. After reinstalling the driver, you need to restart your PC.
When starting the application, the message “A valid license was not found” appears
Cause:
- License has expired.
Solution:
- You need to renew the application license. For details, see Checking the license expiration date and Adding a license.
If You Cannot Open the Project
The project does not open
Cause:
- The project was created using an older version of the Fenix+ 3 application. Latest versions of the application may not support projects that were created using older versions.
Solution:
Contact technical support. Describe the problem and provide information about the application version you are using. For more information, see Checking Program Version. Add the project file as an attachment. The technical support will send you a copy of the project file, which is compatible with the application version you are using.
Problems That May Occur When You Create a Scenario
You cannot place a person in a certain area of the scene
Cause 1
When you add a person on the scene, the application checks that nothing can prevent this person to evacuate from the place where you are placing them.
Therefore, if a certain object is already located in this place, you cannot add a person there.
Solution
- Check the topology and find an object in the area where you want to add a person.
- Edit object properties so that the object does not interfere with the placement of the person.
Typically, this object can be a floor slab located on the underlying floor, and the upper level of which is higher than the level of the floor on which the person is placed. Since the floor slab is not visible when adding a person, you need to switch to the floor below to adjust its level.
Cause 2
When you add a person on the scene, the application checks that the height of the free area above them is not less than the minimum threshold height of escape routes. For more information, see Evacuation Simulation Parameters.
Solution
- Check the topology and find the object with the following properties: the distance between its lower level and the level where you want to place a person is less than the minimum threshold height of escape routes.
- Edit object properties so that the object does not interfere with the placement of the person.
Typically, this object can be a floor slab, which, for convenience, is usually hidden during the placing of people.
The application checks that nothing prevents a person from evacuation only at the time you add the person. If changes that prevent a person to evacuate, are made to the project later, there will be no warnings about it.
Problems That May Occur During the Evacuation Simulation
In case of any evacuation simulation problems, first make sure that the scenario is correctly composed. For more information, see Scenario Requirements Make sure that all errors that could interfere with evacuation simulation have been addressed. For more information, see Checking a Project For Errors.
Contents
- Some people cannot evacuate
- The evacuation start time is incorrectly determined
- Evacuation simulation result - Looping
- During an evacuation, people leave the building and walk down the street to the exit
Some people cannot evacuate
- Make sure that your scenario is composed correctly. For more information, see Scenario Requirements.
- Make sure that people are in rooms, which have exits (users often forget to add doors).
- Make sure that the width and height of the escape routes through which people must pass are not less than the minimum threshold.
- Make sure that elements located on other floors and therefore invisible in the editor do not interfere with the people evacuation (often the height of walls or upper level of floor slabs are set incorrectly).
- Make sure objects on the scene are aligned with each other.
Evacuation Start Time is incorrectly determined
Make sure the building properties are set correctly. For details, see Setting building properties.
Make sure you specify the Evacuation Start Time correctly for people on the floors and in the rooms, as well as for each person individually.
Evacuation simulation result - Looping
- Watch an animation of the evacuation process and detect people who did not evacuate.
- Analyze the topology next to these people. Most likely, there is some element of the scene next to them: a narrow door, a wall next to the stairs, just stairs.
- Check that the topology is drawn correctly in this area. Adjust the topology if necessary.
- Repeat the evacuation simulation.
During an evacuation, people leave the building through the exit and walk from it along the street to another exit
This situation can occur if you assign people a certain exit, which is unavailable due to the fact that one of the areas on the way to this exit is blocked: for example, there is no door in the vestibule-gateway before the exit, or the shortest way to the exit is located outside the building’s premises. Thus, people evacuate through another exit and then move to the assigned exit along the street.
To resolve the problem, do the following:
- Watch the animation of the evacuation process and identify the blocked section on the path to the designated exit: for example, a door may be missing in the wall, or a staircase may be missing on the floor.
- Make changes to the topology so that the blocked section of the path becomes accessible for evacuation.
- Repeat the evacuation simulation.
If you cannot find any errors in scenario composition and the problem persists, please contact technical support*.
Problems That May Occur During the Fire Dynamics Simulation
In case of any evacuation simulation problems, first make sure that all errors that could prevent the simulation are addressed. For more information, see Checking a Project For Errors.
If you ignore the warnings and run the fire dynamics simulation, in this case the simulation may end with the status Error.
Alternatively, the simulation is conducted, but after that you must check that the scene was transferred to FDS correctly.
Contents
- Simulation does not start
- Simulation interrupts unexpectedly
- Simulation ends, but there is no fire
- Simulation takes a very long time
Simulation does not start
First, perform basic script and application settings checks:
- Check that all the necessary elements for the fire dynamics simulation are present in the scenario: fire source, calculation area, registering device in the calculation area.
- Verify that the FDS is installed and configured. For details, see General settings.
- Check that the amount of available RAM is sufficient to run the simulation. For details, see Calculation area.
If after this the simulation still does not start, then pay attention to the following objects: Fire source and Ventilation, as well as Calculation areas in which they are located.
Cause 1
If the cell size of the calculation area is larger than the size of the objects on which the fire and ventilation are located, then in FDS such objects can be transferred as obstacles with zero thickness. FDS does not allow fire sources or ventilation to be located on such obstacles.
Solution
Reduce the cell size of the calculation area so that it is smaller than the size of the objects on which the fire sources and ventilation are located.
Cause 2
For FDS, it is necessary that the fire source and ventilation are completely located on an obstacle. If even a small part of them is located outside the obstacle (hanging in the air), this can lead to an error.
Solution
Make sure that fire sources and ventilation are completely on the surfaces of obstacles.
Cause 3
The fire area is located on an object made of non-combustible material: the properties of the material indicate that it is non-combustible. For more information, see Material Editor.
Solution
Mark the material as flammable and set the required combustion parameters.
Simulation interrupts unexpectedly
Cause
The the fire dynamics simulation results can take up several gigabytes of hard drive space. Before starting the simulation, FDS does not check the available space, but during operation, if the space runs out, the FDS stops working.
Solution
After the simulation is interrupted, check if you have run out of free disk space. If there is no space left, then it is necessary to delete all simulation results and also free up additional space. After this, run the simulation again.
If there is free space on the disk, but the simulation still is interrupted, contact the technical support.
Simulation ends, but there is no fire
Cause
The cell size of the calculation area is larger than the size of the fire source, which leads to the fact that the fire source disappears when the scenario is transferred to the FDS.
Solution
Reduce the cell size of the calculation area so that it does not exceed the size of the fire source.
Sometimes, for large scenarios, it is unacceptable to reduce the cell size of the calculation area, covering the entire building, since this may increase the simulation time and the required RAM. In this case, you can draw an additional calculation area with a smaller cell size around the fire source.
Simulation takes a very long time
One of the main factors that defines fire dynamics simulation time is the size of calculation areas, in which you conduct simulation, and the size of their cells.
Cause 1
The calculation area that you created is too large for the current scenario.
Solution
Reduce the size of the calculation area. Use recommendations for the placement of calculation areas on the scene. For more information, see Recommendations For Reducing Fire Dynamics Simulation Time.
Cause 2
The height of the calculation area is determined by the objects that are located inside its boundaries. The height of the calculation area cannot be less than the height of the floor. Thus, if the height or level of the object that is located within the boundaries of the calculation area is not specified correctly (for example, the height of the wall is set to 3000 meters instead of 3 meters), then the height of the entire calculation area is equal to the height of this object, which will increase the computational load during simulation. Typically (but not always) this error will cause a dialog box to appear indicating that there is not enough RAM.
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Solution
Adjust the height or level of the objects. To quickly find such an object on the scene, it is recommended to view the scene in the rotation mode. For more information, see Additional tools. Make sure that all objects are displayed on the scene.
Cause 3
The cell size of the calculation area is too small.
Solution
Increase the cell size of the calculation area. If you need to conduct the fire dynamics simulatiuon in a specific part of the scene using the calculation area with a small cell size, then place a small additional calculation area with a small cell size above it, and increase the cell size of the other (large) calculation area.
Cause 4
There are too many registering devices in the calculation area.
Solution
The registering device is designed to collect information about how the dangerous fire factors change in the place of its location. If there are many registering devices in the calculation area, this may lead to an increase in the amount of calculations, which can affect the simulation time. We recommend you to place registering devices along the evacuation paths. For more information, see Registering Device. Do not install registering devices where you do not need to collect information about how the DFF change.
If You Cannot Save the Project
If an error occurs when saving a project, the following information message is displayed:
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To save changes, try saving the project in a different directory. For more information, see Saving a Project With a Different Name.
Other Possible Problems
Report Creation Takes Too Long
The time required to create a report depends on the number of scenarios and the number of objects in each scenario. People and registering devices play the most significant role, especially if the report includes Appendices 1 and 2, which provide detailed information about each person and registering device.
Problems that may occur when transferring a project to another PC
There are two important things you need to know when you transfer a project file from one PC to another:
- Prior to applicatation version x.0.66, information about the materials used in the project was not saved in the project. This information is stored in the following folder C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\
MST\FenixPlus\DataBases. - Floor background images are not stored in project files. Such files are stored in the Images folder, which is located next to the project file.
Therefore, when opening a project created on another PC in a application version x.0.65 or older, two problems may appear:
- The project does not contain information about material properties used in the project.
- The project does not contain floor background images.
Project does not contain information about material properties
If the project uses materials that are not in the user material database, then when opening the project a message appears that the material is not in the database, and the material is created with default parameters. Generally, after that it is possible to continue working.
However, before starting the fire dynamics simulation, you need to set parameters for this material. Otherwise, the simulation results are unreliable.
Therefore, immediately after opening the project, it is recommended to set the material properties. For more details, see Material Editor.
In order to avoid getting a message about missing materials, you can copy all the files from the DataBases folder from one PC to another before launching Fenix+ 3 application and opening the project.
The parameters of materials and profiles of people used in the project are stored within the project itself. If, upon opening the project, the parameters of a material or people profile differ from the properties of the corresponding element (material or people profile) in the application’s directory, you are prompted to choose which values to use. To do this, you need to left-click on one or several highlighted values that must be used, and click the Apply Selected Values button.
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The button Apply selected values is inactive until all inconsistencies are resolved.An attempt to close the window leads to a warning about the need to addrress all inconsistencies.
To apply all values from the project at once, you need to use the Apply values from project button. To apply all values from the directory at once, you need to use the Apply values from directory button.
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After this, you need to confirm the action in the dialog box.
If any material or people profile used in the project is missing in the application directory, they are added there, and a corresponding entry is made in the event log.
There are no floor background images
If the project uses floor background images, then when opening the project, Fenix+ 3 application tries to find them in the Images folder, which is located next to the project file. If there is no image file, then when opening the project, substitute background images are displayed instead of the original background images, and substitute background files are created in the Images folder.
In the project itself, information about the background images is stored. If you later replace the substitute background images with real background images, then they will be successfully processed when opening the project.
The picture below shows the substitute background image, which is displayed if the original background image is not found.
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Recommendations For How To Handle Abnormal Program Termination
When working with the application, an error may occur that leads to an emergency termination of the application. Typically, the application independently monitors such situations and displays a form for sending an error report to the developer upon emergency termination.
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To send an error report, to do the following:
- In the Brief description of the problem field, describe the essence of the problem (if you create a request, the text from this field is the subject of the request).
- In the Additional Information field, describe the actions that preceded the error.
- If you just want to report a problem, then click the Send Report button.
- If you need to contact a technical support specialist for solving the problem, then click the Create ticket button.
- To view the information that will be sent to the developer, click the Report Contents button.
All error messages are received and analyzed by the developer. Bug fixes are included in new versions of the application.
If You Cannot Find the Answer to Your Question
If you cannot find an answer to your question, create a ticket for technical support. To do this, you need to write an email to the following address: support@mst.software.
In the email, you need to describe the problem in as much detail as possible, including your actions immediately before the problem occurred. Additionally, attach to the email any files, screenshots of messages that could help in solving the problem.
In response to your email, you receive a message with the number of the created ticket. If the email with the ticket number does not arrive within 10 minutes, it may have been placed to the spam folder. Check it.
A technical support specialist responds to your request as soon as possible.
You can create a support ticket directly from the application window. To do this, navigate to Help | Create a support ticket. The application will launch your email client and create a new email with initial information already included. Add more information to the email and send it.
The Lisence Cannot Be Updated
If you are unable to update the license, try re-entering the new license. Make sure that no extra symbols, such as spaces, have been included in the new license input field.
If you cannot register the license after several attempts, contact the Feedback service. Provide the USB key number and the version of the installed application you use. Copy and paste into the request the license you are trying to register on the USB key. Attach a screenshot of the application window with the license registration error message.