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Pathfinder User Manual

1. ee Empty Create Elevator Figure 58 Distributing occupants through entire rooms Redistributing Profiles and Behaviors Once occupants have been created the distribution of profiles and behaviors can be reshuffled among them To do so select one or more groups of occupants from the Navigation View right click them and from the right click menu select Properties or double click the occupant group The Edit Group Distributions dialog will appear as shown in Figure 59 If more than one profile exists in the model the 47 Pathfinder User Manual Profile link can be clicked to edit the distribution as discussed in Group Placement If more than one behavior exists in the model the Behavior link can be clicked to edit its distribution NOTE Changing the distribution of profiles or behaviors will not change the number of occupants in the group It will just change which profile behavior is assigned to each occupant to match the specified distribution as closely as possible fear Group Dembutons Profile 50 0 Men 50 0 Women Behavior Goto Any Exit Figure 59 Edit Group Distributions dialog 48 Pathfinder User Manual 5 Editing and Copying Objects Most objects can be edited in two ways in Pathfinder One way is to transform the object including rotating translating moving and mirroring it Another way is to graphically manipulate the objects by dragging handles Objects can also
2. 52 Pathfinder User Manual D pe EE Bop Se D Ee eEEoBRop Ge A Figure 67 Mirroring an object Objects can also be copied using the mirror tool To do so select the mirror tool select Copy Mode from the property panel and follow the same steps as above for mirroring an object Alternatively hold CTRL on the keyboard while defining the mirror plane This will create a copy of the object that has been mirrored from the original using the mirror plane Manipulating Objects with Handles Some objects including occupants rooms stairs and doors can be edited through manipulator handles Handles act as points on an object that can either be dragged with the selection tool or edited by the keyboard to edit the attached object Handles only appear on selected objects and show as blue dots as shown in Figure 68 Figure 68 Manipulator handles Selecting and deselecting a handle To select an object s handle the object itself must first be selected Once it is selected the blue handles should appear Next select the Select Edit tool le Now an individual handle can be selected by clicking it which will make the handle property panel appear as shown in Figure 69 To deselect the handle press Escape on the keyboard click anywhere else in the model or select another object 53 Pathfinder User Manual Commit Cancel Figure 69 Handle property panel Editing a handle A handle can be edited in one of two
3. E d P Path we ke y JIHUNDESHEAD ENGINEERING 403 Poyntz Avenue Suite B Manhattan KS 66502 USA 1 785 770 8511 www thunderheadeng com User Manual Pathfinder 2012 Disclaimer Thunderhead Engineering makes no warranty expressed or implied to users of Pathfinder and accepts no responsibility for its use Users of Pathfinder assume sole responsibility under Federal law for determining the appropriateness of its use in any particular application for any conclusions drawn from the results of its use and for any actions taken or not taken as a result of analyses performed using these tools Users are warned that Pathfinder is intended for use only by those competent in the field of egress modeling Pathfinder is intended only to supplement the informed judgment of the qualified user The software package is a computer model that may or may not have predictive capability when applied to a specific set of factual circumstances Lack of accurate predictions by the model could lead to erroneous conclusions All results should be evaluated by an informed user Acknowledgements This work was originally made possible by a Small Business Innovative Research SBIR grant by the United States National Science Foundation We would like to thank Rolf Jensen and Associates for their assistance with testing and other suggestions that helped guide the development of the simulator We would also like to thank the beta testers who
4. Y Door23 3 objects selected Show groups Le lees Figure 47 Exit Chooser dialog Adding actions Additional actions can be added to any behavior such as going to a room a waypoint an elevator or simply waiting in place To add an action select a behavior or existing behavior action The property panel Figure 46 will show a drop down button with the description of an action that can be added To add the currently shown action simply click the button To add a different action click the down arrow shown to the right of the button and select the desired action from the behavior actions list 42 Pathfinder User Manual E Add Goto Waypoint Fe Add Goto Waypoint Add Goto Rooms Add Goto Elevators Add Wait Figure 48 Behavior actions list Once the desired action is clicked a creation panel will be shown above the 3D 2D View depending on the action Enter the desired parameters in the creation panel as discussed in the following sections and then click Create to create the action and append it to the behavior If the behavior itself was selected when adding the action then the new action will be appended to the end of the list If instead an action was selected when the new action was created then the new action is inserted directly after that selected action Actions always occur in the order shown in the Navigation View For instance as shown in Figure 49 an occupant us
5. nen ek 49 MOVIN een ee ee ee 49 O ae 50 MTO DE ee ee ee es EN 52 Man pulating Opjects WIth Handles Aue le 53 Selecting and GESCIECIING a NANCIE ni une 53 Befurt 54 ROOM Te A OS 54 a eiserne 54 TRICK CO handl iia 55 Stair and Ramp Ranas e lee 55 Occupation bd ed tante os es 55 Waypointihandies edee 56 Gs Model Analista t 57 Measurine KE ne 57 ChNEcKNE viele ege 57 CMECKING n Use OD ect on 59 Warmines ana EE 59 7 SIMUIALINE eege 61 A 61 Starting and Managing a Simulation sssssssensseessseesserssrrssrrrssrrrsrresrrrosreeseeesseresrersrerssrresreeseeres 63 Simulating via command line coooccnccncnncnocnnonanonononnnnnonnnnarononarononarononnonnnnrononarononarononanononoos 64 Stopping and Resuming a Simulation ccoocccconcnnconconenanonenacononacononacnnonnononarononaronenaronenanononoss 64 DECK ele bey ay ey ea ea ee E 65 A O AS 66 SUMMA REDO ea O E E 66 OT ON E ad ge 67 A ae ge 67 o AI sen 68 Navigating through a model 68 Displaying BOOMOETLY Input anna 69 Displaying OCCUD AN ES canarias 69 Selectine Occupant ii Is 69 Viewing multi floor problem 69 ANIMAUON DIayDack za toa iEa 71 Hd eer EE 71 Viewing occupant Paths t N 72 Controlling drawing detail speed naaa ias 72 EredtINE le EE 72 A NA 75 vi Figures Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 7 Figure 8 Figure 9 Figure 10 Figure 11 Figure 12 Figure 13 Figure 14 Figure 15 An ex
6. Door00 F Door01 Flow Rates for Selected Doors F Door03 F Door04 2 00 F Door07 F Door08 Y Stair01 door 1 F Stair01 door 2 Y Stair02 door 1 F Stair02 door 2 4 50 J Stair03 door 1 F Stair03 door 2 a yr Y Stair04 door 1 gt 4 4 F Stair04 door 2 o 4 E 1 00 d ry l IK ANAT N 5 PNA V 3 e I KA N 500 d 0 0 0 0 20 00 40 00 60 00 80 00 400 0 Time in Seconds DoorO0 StairOl StairO2 StairO3 StairO4 120 0 door 1 door 1 door 1 1 door The room history file name_rooms csv where name is the name of your saved PTH file provides the following information columns in each row 67 Pathfinder User Manual time s The output time for this data row The frequency of output is controlled by the CSV Output Freq box in the Simulation Parameters dialog Remaining Total The number of occupants still in the simulation Exited Total The number of occupants that have successfully passed through an exit door leaving the simulation roomname The number of occupants present in room or stairway roomname at the current time To display this data as a time history plot click Room Usage on the results menu 3D Results Pathfinder provides a real time output visualization program for viewing 3D results lt operates much like a video player in that it allows users to play pause stop slide and speed up and down time It i
7. diameter 45 58 cm would normally fill the elevator in steering mode Increasing or decreasing the nominal load will cause occupants sizes to be scaled up or down while they are on the elevator The scale factor default 1 0 is determined by a correlation to the density produced by the nominal load This makes it possible to adjust loading while still accounting for differences in individual occupants size In steering mode the geometry of the elevator can lead to reduced loads e g if the elevator is 2 8 persons wide Please verify that the resulting post simulation elevator loads match elevator manufacturer recommendations Connecting Disconnecting Floors When an elevator is created by default it is connected to every floor its doors touch along the elevator shaft Individual elevator doors can be disabled however to prevent entering exiting the elevator through those doors on specific floors To do so right click the elevator door on the desired floor from the Navigation View or 3D 2D View and select Disable from the right click menu To re enable it right click the door from the Navigation View and select Enable Alternatively right click an elevator level and select Disable to disconnect all doors on that level effectively preventing the elevator from picking up occupants on that level Exits In Pathfinder exits are merely thin doors that exist on the boundary of the model An exit can only have aroom on one of its sides E
8. disks and cylinders They can also be displayed as the artist s mannequin or as their respective human avatars specified in their profiles These options are available under View menu and Agents submenu Coloring Rooms Rooms can be colored in a variety of ways All coloring options are available under the View menu and Color Rooms submenu The default option is to display each room with a unique color They can also be colored by occupant density which means that rooms with a greater concentration of agents will be colored redder and rooms with a lesser concentration will be colored bluer The last option is to use a mixed mode In this mode the rooms are only colored by concentration if they contain agents otherwise they are colored with their unique colors Room Opacity Sometimes it is useful to be able to see through rooms and stairways such as when drawing on top of an imported background image To change the opacity of a set of components select them and in the property panel change the opacity Opacity settings will carry through to 3D results visualization Model Organization with Groups The main method of organization in Pathfinder is to use groups In every model there are already some implicit groups that cannot be modified including Imported Geometry Profiles Behaviors Occupants Elevators and Floors as shown in Figure 6 Sub groups can be created to further organize the model as discussed in the following sections Pat
9. e Rectangular Room Tool The Rectangular Room tool O creates simple rectangular geometry by left clicking two points in the model The rectangular area can also be created by entering coordinates for two points in the property panel and clicking the Create button 41 1 35m ae 3 5 m Region Floor 0 0 m Z Plane o o m Select Create Mis 2 0 m VE 2 0 m Figure 12 Drawing a room with the rectangle tool In addition to creating new areas both of these tools can be used on existing geometry to create negative areas Creating new geometry over existing areas removes any interfering portion from those areas The newly created geometry can then be deleted leaving the negative space behind This is discussed further in the section Arbitrarily Shaped Obstructions Desks Tables etc 15 Pathfinder User Manual Adding thin walls to rooms Thin internal walls or boundaries can be added to rooms with the Thin Wall tool E To use this tool click two points in a room as shown in Figure 13 The line between these two rooms must lie in one plane of the room SG Spe ekko Monasa LTL E ENOTE Figure 13 Adding a thin wall to a room Splitting rooms Rooms can be split into two or more pieces using the Thin Wall tool To do this specify the two points such that they are on the outermost boundary of the room to be divided The original geometry will be divided into two or more new rooms with that line as the boundary between
10. points When measuring distances in the 2D view however the distance is taken by projecting the points onto a plane parallel to the camera view plane and then taking the distance Checking Connectivity Sometimes it is desirable to check how various components are connected in the model to debug simulation errors or to ensure model validity For instance a model might contain two rooms connected by a hallway as shown in Figure 74 r Ka Pathfinder 2011 Connectivity pth 7 CA A YA u 8 m u m Eile Edit Model View Simulation Results Help Beda osyx E 0 0 ee EA AAN s A E Floor Creation Sorting New Egress Components v Auto sort egress components Group Floor 0 0m Y Automatically create floors Floor height 3 0 m Of Goto Any Exit E a Occupants p TH Elevators Floors H Floor 0 0 m IBER RELOAD Es 3 706 5 129 1 705 m Figure 74 Connectivity example If a user attempts to simulate this model the following error appears 5 Pathfinder User Manual ERROR 00001 cannot reach any exits Click OK to stop simulation and highlight invalid objects This type of error usually indicates that the model is not properly connected It is telling us that the occupant named 00001 cannot reach any of their assigned exits This means that either a connecting door is missing along their route to the exit or some other problem has occurred
11. Max Head Height 1 3288 m Extract 7 0 0m Gap Tolerance 15 24 cm Figure 38 Property panel for the floor extraction tool To extract a room using this tool first select the tool from the 2D or 3D view Once the appropriate parameters have been chosen either enter a location on the floor of the desired room into the property panel or click this point in the 3D or 2D view If this point does not have any overhead obstructions within Max Head Height and the point is on a polygon with a slope less than Max Slope Pathfinder will march out from this point on the imported geometry s polygons until it finds the boundaries of the room It will also subtract overhead obstructions within Max Head Height from the resulting room An example of an extracted room is shown in Figure 39 Figure 39 A room extracted from a PyroSim file When using the 3D floor extraction tool Pathfinder will include all imported geometry with faces even if hidden If an object must be excluded from floor extraction before performing extraction select the imported object and in the property panel deselect Include in room extraction Working with 2D DXFs 2D DXF data can be worked with in two ways it can be used as a guide for drawing rooms similarly to background images with the added benefit of being snapped to or it can have rooms automatically extracted from it similarly to 3D imported geometry 35 Pathfinder User Manual To sketch the rooms using the
12. S Pathfinder untitled Ele Edt Model Wew Simulation AAA MAL d Se hiu Oo y x ao oO Fear Fir 0 0m Jennan BO BO a RARAS S88 no BO Sa RIFA S c imporned Geonetry H Profiles D Occunants gt Floor d Floor 0 0 m E 7GeoekEscO E o GGS200 Figure 21 Adding a thin door to connect two touching rooms Thick doors Thick doors are often useful in realistic models especially when CAD geometry has been imported In real scenarios rooms will not touch each other by infinitely thin walls as shown in Figure 22 To create a thick door to connect these rooms first select the door tool B and then use one of the following three methods e Manual Entry Make sure Max Depth is greater than or equal to the distance between the edges the door will lie between Enter a point on one of the edges in the property panel If the coordinates specify a valid door location the Create Door button will enable Click this button and a door no larger than Max Width will be created e Single Click Make sure Max Depth is greater than or equal to the distance between the edges the door will lie between Then move the cursor over the desired door location in the 3D or 2D view A preview door will be displayed extending between the rooms if the cursor is on a valid edge The door displayed will lie either to the left or right of the hover point relative to the boundary edge depending on whether Max Width is positive or
13. all geometry from its location to 20 and every other floor contains geometry from its location to the next floor s location Edit Floors Figure 82 Floor location dialog for 3D results Once the floors are defined wall clipping can be applied to shorten the walls yet maintain a sense of obstruction placement as shown in Figure 83 b As shown in this figure more of the model can be seen than in Figure 83 a The wall height can be set in the toolbar above the 3D view If this value is set above O the geometry on every floor will be clipped above the floor s Z location plus the wall height If the value is set to O the full wall height is used To stack floors vertically along the Z axis open the Scene menu and select Layout Floors Vertically When viewed in this manner floors will appear naturally such that each floor is stacked on top of the one below it The floors can then be separated by empty space to more easily view inside the model as shown in Figure 83 c This Floor Separation can be set in the toolbar above the 3D view To layout floors in the XY plane open the Scene menu and select Layout Floors Horizontally The floors will be laid out in a square grid and in one plane They will appear in order from left to right and top to bottom such that the lowest floor is in the upper left corner and the highest floor is in the lower right corner When laid out in this manner the Floor Separation will affect the gap between floo
14. allows creation of stairs between two semi parallel boundaries of rooms on different Z planes and the other allows creation of stairs that extend from one room boundary until a criterion is met such as number of steps height of stairs etc or until another room is reached All stairs implicitly contain two doors one at each end of the stairs The width of each door is controlled through the stair s Door 1 Width and Door 2 Width properties Door 1 is the door at the bottom of the steps and door 2 is atthe top Stairs also contain tread rise and run properties which control the speed at which occupants can travel on the stairs during simulation While the one point stair tool uses the tread rise and run to create the initial shape of the stair these properties can later be changed without affecting the shape One requirement of all stairs for successful simulation is that each end of the stairs must connect to boundary edges of the rooms meaning that there must be empty space at the top of the stairway and empty space below the bottom This requirement is shown in Figure 23 The size of the gap must be greater than or equal to the radius of the largest occupant to travel on the stairs 22 Pathfinder User Manual wae G Pathfinder untitled was Ble Edt Model Wew Simulation Bela Ay x am O cua ox ae o Jeen BOBO Sea koxee aay Paar Foo 0 0m Jeron BE BO Ye RIAL o kopanec Geonet Hr profes D canse a Floors a D
15. b 71 Door15 H f Level 3 0 m H i Level6 0 m W 8 lt Disconnected Level gt WW El Level 12 0 m Figure 30 Elevator representation Editing Elevators Once an elevator is created the elevator s properties can be edited by first selecting it from the navigation view or by ALT clicking one of its rooms from the 2D or 3D view Its properties can be edited in the property panel as shown in Figure 31 X Bounds 114 00 m 16 50 m Nominal Load 42 6092 pers Discharge Floor Hoor 0 0m e Name Elevator 0 Y Bounds 10 00 m 13 00 m Open Delay 5 05 Floor Priority top down Visible Z Bounds 0 00 m 30 00m Close Delay 5 05 Level Data Figure 31 Elevator property panel e Nominal Load the number of people in a full elevator load estimated Please read the Nominal Load section below for details e Open Delay the minimum amount of time an elevator s doors will stay open on a pickup floor e Close Delay the time between when the last occupant goes into the elevator on a pickup floor and the door closes e Discharge Floor the floor at which occupants will discharge during an evacuation 28 Pathfinder User Manual e Floor Priority the priority of the floors for pickup By default this is top down This can be changed however by clicking the text which will show the Floor Priority dialog as shown in Figure 32 This allows the simulation of a fire
16. be copied but currently the only way to do this is through the transform tools as discussed in the following section Transforming and Copying Objects All geometric objects can be transformed and or copied All transform copy options are available through tools in the 3D and 2D views The following transforms are available and are discussed in the following sections moving rotating and mirroring Moving To move one or more objects select the objects and click the move tool 9 from the 2D or 3D view The property panel for the move tool is shown in Figure 60 Move X 0 0 m Normal Mode Move Move Y 0 0 m Copy Mode Copies 1 Cancel Move Zi 0 0m Figure 60 Property panel for the translate tool The object can be moved either manually or graphically e Manually Select Normal Mode and enter the distance to offset the object in the Move X Y and Z boxes Then click Move e Graphically This is performed most easily in one of the 2D views To translate graphically click two points on the model The vector from the first point to the second defines the movement offset When moving graphically objects will only be moved parallel to the camera s view plane The steps for translating graphically are shown in Figure 61 49 Pathfinder User Manual DUERO Geh PRESA Ses OD y Figure 61 Graphically moving an object Objects can also be copied using the move tool To do so select the move tool select Copy Mode from t
17. floor e Level Data click the button to edit timing for each floor This will open the Elevator Levels dialog as shown in Figure 33 o Delay the time delay from the start of the simulation for when the elevator can start picking up occupants from a floor This value does not affect the discharge floor Open Close Time the total of the door opening and closing time for this floor Pickup Time the time for the elevator to travel from the discharge to the pickup floor Discharge Time the time for the elevator to travel from the pickup to the discharge floor 2 o Reset By selecting the Reset option at the bottom of the dialog an Elevator Timing dialog will open allowing automated recalculation of the Level Data parameters The timing options shown are the same as those shown when creating the elevator Floor Priority loor 27 0 m 2 Foor n 3 Floor 21 0 m 4 Foor 18 0m 6 Foor 120m DR 9 Foors0m 10 Floor 0 0m NM Move Up Move Down Sort top down Figure 32 Elevator Priority dialog Pickup Time Discharge Time The pickup and discharge times are calculated from the timing parameters entered in the New Elevator dialog when the elevator is created 29 Pathfinder User Manual Figure 33 Elevator Levels dialog Nominal Load The nominal load is an estimate of the number of people that represent a full elevator load The default value is based on an estimate of how many occupants of default size
18. geometry will be added to the Imported Geometry group If the imported file contains holes the holes will be automatically subtracted from the solid obstructions and discarded If the file contains grids the grids will be intersected with each other as FDS would and the remaining minimum Z faces of the grids will be imported If the file contains OPEN vents the vents will be subtracted from the appropriate grid faces and discarded Working with Imported Data Each type of file that can be imported provides an aid for creating navigation geometry The different types can be worked with in various ways to create the desired rooms stairs and doors Common to all import types is the ability to set the color and opacity for each component of the geometry The imported geometry is sent as is to 3D Results resulting in a clean and fast graphical representation of the data Working with Images Working with background images requires the user to draw all rooms doors and stairs over the background image Because the drawn navigation geometry will cover the background image it may be preferable to make the navigation geometry transparent This can be accomplished by selecting the drawn navigation components and lowering the opacity in the property panel Figure 37 shows a background image with rooms and doors drawn on top with a lowered opacity for the drawn rooms F g Ej Pathfinder 2009 1 Beta untitied I View pr AI Pa
19. left to right shows the current playback status This will display Playing Paused or Stopped The following section shows the current playback time in minutes The next section shows the current playback speed The last section shows the current rendering speed in frames per second a common speed measurement in computer graphics This can help determine how well a user s computer handles 3D playback Some ways to increase this are discussed in the section Controlling drawing detail speed Refreshing Results Results can be viewed as a simulation is running but they will only be current to the last load or refresh To refresh the results at any time press F5 on the keyboard or select Refresh Results in the File menu 71 Pathfinder User Manual The current playback time will be restored after refreshing the results making the refresh as seamless as possible If the results are viewed before the simulation is finished upon completion the results will automatically be refreshed and brought to the front of the screen Viewing occupant paths One option that can help visualize flow in an evacuation is to turn on occupant paths This can be enabled by checking Show Occupant Paths in the View menu When turned on each occupant s path will be drawn from t 0 to the current playing time Controlling drawing detail speed There are several options controlling the drawing detail and ultimately speed in the 3D results including
20. movie and larger file size 30 frames second provides reasonably smooth video playback e Speed specifies the speed at which the results will play 1 X will play the movie at real time speed 2 X will play the movie twice real time etc e Enable Level of Detail specifies that level of detail rendering should be turned on while creating the movie This will lower the resulting quality but it will decrease the time to make the movie on scenes with many occupants e Watch Movie when Finished specifies that the resulting movie should open in the default video player for the chosen video type when the movie is completed e Compressor shows which video codec is currently selected and allows the codec to be chosen and configured If Configure is pressed another dialog will show as in Figure 84 b This dialog will show a list of the codecs currently installed on the computer Some codecs allow certain properties such as the Quality Data Rate and Keyframe interval to be specified These properties control the resulting movie s quality file size and seeking performance how well a movie can be skipped around in the video player respectively Some codecs do not expose these properties through this dialog however To configure these codecs you must press the additional Configure button if it is enabled 73 Pathfinder User Manual Movie Properties Select Video Compressor Compressor Uncompressed RG Quality Cinepa Xvid MPEG 4 Codec
21. occupant profiles you can use the Edit Profiles dialog Figure 42 To open the Edit Profiles dialog on the Model menu click Edit Profiles Edit Profiles Sm Default Name Females lt 30 yr Females 20 50 yr Females lt 30 yr Males 30 50 yr 3D Model CMan0001 CMan0002 CMan0003 CMan0012 CWom0001 CWom0018 CWom0019 Edit Males lt 30 yr ETT Males gt 50 impaired Color Description Characteristics Advanced Priority Level 0 Speed Uniform 0 93 m s 1 55 m s Shoulder Width Constant w 45 58 cm Reset to Defaults Figure 42 The Edit Profiles dialog The Description box provides a place to enter descriptive text This value is not used outside the Edit Profiles dialog The 3D Model input provides a way to use a specific set of 3D human models for an occupant profile To select 3D models click Edit on the 3D Model row This will open the 3D Models dialog see Figure 43 When rendering occupants as 3D human models belonging to the current profile Pathfinder will choose one of the 3D models selected in the 3D Model dialog To enable or disable a particular model click the model s icon 38 Pathfinder User Manual E 3D Model Figure 43 An example of the 3D model dialog The Characteristics tab provides the following parameters e Priority Level the priority of the occupant Higher values indicate
22. only contains walking space doors stairs and exits These two geometry sets can be switched between by selecting Show Navigation Mesh or Show Scene Geometry under the Scene menu Currently only one geometry set can be displayed at a time Displaying occupants Occupants can be displayed in several ways They can be shown as simple shapes as realistic people or as the artist s wood mannequin All display options are found under the Agents menu The first way to display occupants is as simple shapes including disks and cylinders Because of the simplicity this is the fastest way to view agents for both loading and rendering speed but it is the least realistic and contains little animation Another way to display occupants is as realistic people The avatar selected in the pre processor determines which avatar is shown in the 3D results Displayed this way occupants will render slower and take longer to load but the scene will appear much more realistic and should still be fast enough to display hundreds to thousands of occupants depending on the processor speed and graphics card The last way to display occupants is as the artist s mannequin This is the slowest way to display occupants and so it is not as useful for large problems but it is completely generic contains animation and still provides a degree of realism above simple shapes Selecting Occupants Occupants can be selected for tracking purposes by clicking on the occupan
23. or the right click menu 17 Pathfinder User Manual Select Ghildren New Floor Set as Active Floor Show All Floors X Delete Rename Sort Alphabetically Select Occupants Select Connected Comp Add Occupants Merge Hide Figure 17 Separating a room Obstructions Holes In Pathfinder obstructions are modeled as holes in the navigation geometry Holes can be created with an arbitrary polygonal shape or as thick walls Arbitrarily Shaped Obstructions Desks Tables etc To model an obstruction e g an office desk or other standing obstacle within a room the subtractive property of rooms is used This means that the room containing the obstruction must already exist To create the obstruction select the Add a Polygonal Room tool or the Add a Rectangular Room tool and draw the shape and location of the obstructed area This will subtract the area from the old room and create a new room Next delete the new room A hole is left in the old room in the shape of the obstruction This process is shown in Figure 18 18 Pathfinder User Manual Peper Pos don OC Ce L ps Cancel Foirgon Jag By Pat Jae Wen Soudan Es Eege OSS DO en 6 rea w EE Add Pork Profies d a a o E a a i Dev E 7iwebkkaco B 7iwekk aao E 7iwekk aao c o d Figure 18 Creating an obstruction Walls The wall tool Dn is used to make rectan
24. room We can add a door to fix the problem From the Select Connected Components dialog we could have also chosen to select only immediately adjacent components This would have only selected the original room and the door between the room and the hallway This allows finer inspection of connectivity in a highly connected model Checking in use Objects In Pathfinder there are several objects that can refer to other objects in the model For instance an occupant can refer to both a profile and a behavior a behavior can refer to exits the goto elevators action can refer to elevators etc There are times when it is useful to know what objects are referring to another For instance it may be important to know which occupants are using a particular behavior To do this right click the behavior or other in use object and from the right click menu click Select Referencing Objects This will highlight all objects currently using that behavior Warnings and Errors Pathfinder shows warnings and errors in the Navigation Tree to help debug potential errors in the simulation These warnings appear as a small exclamation mark imposed over an occupant or record be By hovering the mouse over the warning a more detailed description of the problem can be determined For convenience if an object has problems the warning marker is propagated up through the navigation tree to its ancestor groups in order to quickly identify problems in the model Some
25. selecting an individual occupant These specific values will never change unless the distribution is changed in the profile or a new seed is manually generated for the occupant This ensures that two simulation runs with the same input model will give the same answer New seeds can be generated for occupants by right clicking the occupants and selecting Randomize For an example of the effects of the changing the seed or profile consider the following scenario A profile has been created using a uniform distribution of speed on the range 1 m s to 2 m s An occupant is created using this profile Using the occupant s unique random seed Pathfinder assigns the occupant a speed of 1 6 m s based on the occupant s profile 4 The simulation is run several times and each time the occupant has a maximum speed of 1 6 m s 5 The occupant s profile is changed so that its speed range is 5 m s to 1 m s Pathfinder assigns the occupant a new maximum speed of 6 m s which is used for all subsequent simulations 7 The user randomizes the occupant and Pathfinder assigns anew maximum speed of 91 m s to the occupant 40 Pathfinder User Manual Customizing Occupants When occupants are selected their property panel appears as shown in Figure 44 Occupants can be given custom profile data once they are added to the model This can be done by selecting a set of occupants and checking the box next to the parameter to be customized When using cus
26. the movie For real time movies the only allowable type is WMV Once the file name is chosen the codec configuration dialog will be shown as in Figure 84 b When OK is pressed on this dialog the movie will begin recording At this point anything the user sees will be recorded in the movie Now the user can change the camera angle start and stop playback select occupants change view settings etc and the movie will capture everything At any time the movie can be paused or stopped Pausing the movie will stop the recording but leave the movie file open so that recording can be resumed to the same file This allows the user to perform some action that they do not want to be recorded To pause movie recording press the pause movie button O To resume recording press the resume movie button O Stopping the movie will end recording and disallow any further recording to the file To stop recording press the stop movie button 0 74 Pathfinder User Manual 9 Index 2D View 5 6 Navigating 7 3D Results 68 Casual Dress 69 Mannequin 69 Navigating 68 Simple Shapes 69 3D View 5 6 Navigating 6 Add Occupants 47 Add Occupants Dialog 47 Animation Playback 71 Background Images 31 Collision Handling 62 63 Door History File 67 Door Tool 20 21 Doors 11 20 Exit 30 Thick 21 Thin 20 DXF Files 32 Edit Profiles Dialog 38 FDS Files 34 Floors 5 6 11 Changing Active Floor 13 Creating 13 Editing
27. them as shown in Figure 14 Figure 14 Dividing a room Note that drawing a thin wall between two boundaries of the room will not always split the rooms into multiple pieces as shown in Figure 15 In this case the tool will simply add a thin wall 16 Pathfinder User Manual Quay S e epEooo J OBOD pr ep Sa rokrak Figure 15 Special case for drawing a thin wall Separating and merging rooms In addition to dividing rooms Pathfinder has two additional means to aid in creating more complex room geometry e Merge The Merge command is used to join two or more rooms that share boundaries into one room To use it select the neighboring rooms and select Merge from either the Model menu or the right click menu NOTE Rooms can be merged even if they do not lie in the same plane as long as they share a common edge They can also be merged with stairs and ramps but the stairs and ramps will be converted into rooms and will lose their stair ramp properties Select Ghildren New Floor Set as Active Floor Show All Floors 3 Delete Delete Rename Sort Alphabetically Select Occupants Select Connected Components Add Occupants Merge Ctrl M Separate Ctrl P Figure 16 Merging rooms e Separate The Separate command breaks a room into its constituent parts along any negative space that divides it To use it select the room to be separated and select Separate from either the Model menu
28. view For all navigation tools but the Roam tool reset will make the camera look down the negative Z axis at the model For the roam tool however reset will make the camera look down the negative Y axis at the model The camera can also be reset to the current selection at any time by pressing CTRL E This will cause the camera to zoom in on the selected objects and the orbit tool to rotate about the center of their bounding sphere Filling the view Very similar to resetting the camera the view can be fit by pressing F on the keyboard or selecting the Fit View tool Ed The difference between the Fill View and Reset All tools is that filling the screen does not change the view angle of the camera Instead the camera will recenter rezoom to fit the screen Pathfinder User Manual Drawing in the 3D and 2D views Drawing can be performed in both the 3D view and the top 2D view The 3D view allows the user to see the model from any angle but most tools restrict drawing in the XY plane The top view completely restricts drawing to the XY plane but it also displays an optional snap grid The snap grid size can be set under Edit snap grid spacing in the View menu and it can be turned off by deselecting Show Snap Grid inthe View menu Drawing is performed in one of the two following modes e Normal Mode Single click a drawing tool button on the left side of the view Draw the object using the instructions in the appropriate section of the manua
29. with this option so it may need to be disabled for these cards The two options Enable Hardware Skinning and Enable Vertex Buffers when combined tend to provide the most benefit on newer video hardware Creating Movies Movies can be created from the 3D results for playback on a PC using a video player such as Windows Media Player Creating a movie file allows the results to be distributed to others who do not have the 3D results software that is bundled with Pathfinder Movies can be created in two different ways One way is to create a high quality movie that is rendered offline from a fixed camera angle The other is to create a lower quality movie in real time that allows the camera angle and scene to change dynamically High Quality Movies High quality movies are useful if a user wants a movie that is unrestricted by size and frame rate This means that it will play back smoothly at any resolution and with any high quality settings turned on 72 Pathfinder User Manual regardless of the complexity of the scene The major disadvantage to this type of movie is that the camera angle remains fixed throughout the length of the movie and the user cannot interact with the scene such as changing the selected occupant turning on and off paths etc while the movie is being created To create a high quality movie open the File menu and select Create Movie A file chooser will ask for the file name of the resulting movie From this file
30. within the Z clipping planes of the active floor is visible Showing all floors To show all floors click the floor drop down box as shown in Figure 9 and click lt Show All gt This will additionally show all occupants on the floors and all sub objects of the floors groups and it will set the import filter to the union of all the floors filters Editing floors To edit a floor first select the desired floor The property panel as shown in Figure 10 will appear showing the floor s name its working Z location and the Z clipping planes for imported 3D geometry It also shows some statistics of the floor including the total area of the floor Area number of people on the floor Pers and density of people The Working Z property controls the plane on which new rooms and wall obstructions are drawn The Z min and max filters control the clipping planes of imported 3D geometry when the floor is visible Anything below Z min and above Z max is clipped The Z Min Filter property can either be a Z plane location or can have the special value CURR_FLOOR If it is CURR_FLOOR then the clipping plane is set to the working Z location if there are any floors below this floor or if there are no floors below The Z Max Filter can be a Z plane location or can have the special value NEXT_FLOOR If it is NEXT_FLOOR then the Z plane is set to the working Z plane of the next higher floor if one exists or 2 if there are no higher floors Working
31. 14 Imported Geometry 5 Importing Files 31 Inertia 63 Merge 17 Navigation View 5 Normal Tools 8 Obstructions 15 18 19 Occupant Group Tool 46 Occupant Tool 45 Occupants 5 Adding 45 Creating 38 Stuck 65 One Point Stair Tool 24 Orbit Tool 7 Orthographic Camera 6 Pan Tool 7 Perspective Camera 6 Polygonal Room Tool 15 18 Profiles 5 38 Property Panel 6 Reactive Steering Mode 62 63 Rectangular Room Tool 15 18 Refresh Results 71 Roam Tool 7 Room History File 67 Rooms 11 14 Adding New Rooms 14 Dividing 16 Merging Rooms 17 Separating Rooms 17 Run Simulation 63 Run Simulation Dialog 63 Separate 17 SFPE Mode 62 Show Occupant Paths 72 Simulation Parameters Dialog 61 Snap Grid 8 Snapshot 65 Stairs 11 22 Between Edges 23 Extending from one Edge 24 Sticky Tools 8 Summary Report 66 Two Point Stair Tool 23 Views 5 Drawing in 8 Navigation View 5 Resetting 7 Visibility 6 Wall Tool 19 Walls 19 Zoom Tool 7
32. 9 m Cancel Figure 50 Goto Waypoint creation panel Goto Rooms action A Goto Rooms action specifies that an occupant must select a room out of a set and go to it Once they cross a door into the room they is considered to be in the room and can move on to the next action in their behavior If multiple rooms are specified for the action the occupant will go to the one that is fastest for him to reach To add a Goto Rooms action click the Add Goto Rooms button from the behavior actions list The creation panel will appear as in Figure 51 Either click the Rooms link to specify the rooms with a dialog or left click the desired rooms in the 3D or 2D View Right click in the 3D 2D View to finish selecting the rooms and create the action or click Create Create Add to Behavior Goto Elevators Rooms Room00 Room021 Cancel Figure 51 Goto Rooms creation panel Goto Elevators action A Goto Elevators action tells an occupant to use evacuation elevators When using this action an occupant will go to a specified elevator call it wait for it to arrive enter it and then wait for it to reach the discharge floor Once they reach the discharge floor they can begin their next action The Goto Elevators action can only be used for occupants who are not on the discharge floor of the desired elevator If multiple elevators are specified for the action the occupant will use the one that allows them to reach the discharge floor fastest
33. D egress simulator created and used internally by Rolf Jensen and Associates While the original Pathfinder inspired some of the features of the new simulator the simulator described in this manual does not use any of the code from the original Pathfinder software Contact Us Thunderhead Engineering 403 Poyntz Avenue Suite B Manhattan KS 66502 6081 USA Sales Information sales thunderheadeng com Product Support support thunderheadeng com Phone and Fax 1 785 770 8511 Pathfinder User Manual 2 Pathfinder Basics Pathfinder provides three main views for working on evacuation models the 2D View 3D view and Navigation View These views represent your current model If an object is added removed or selected in one view the other views will simultaneously reflect the change Each view is briefly described below e Navigation View This view lists all objects in the model in a hierarchical format It can be used to quickly locate and modify objects by name e 3D View This view shows a 3D representation of the current model The model can be explored and modified using various tools e 2D View This view is very similar to the 3D View but it provides an additional snapping grid and an orthographic view of the model Navigation View The Navigation View helps you quickly find objects and data that are not always easily accessible from the 3D and 2D views Floor es Floor 0 0 m e elas The Navigation View is arrang
34. DV Video Encoder ffdshow Video Codec Configure ffdshow video encoder Intel IYUV codec Specify target data rate Force keyframe every EE Intel IYUV codec Video Size 4 x 330 pixels Use window size Microsoft RLE ne Microsoft Video 1 Default Quality 100 Framerate 20 frames second MIPEG Compressor Default Keyframe Interval 15 5 Xvid MPEG 4 Codec Speed 1 X Configure e About C Enable Level of Detail watch movie when finished _ Carcel o JL Gei a b Figure 84 Movie option dialogs Once the properties have been specified press OK to start making the movie While the movie is being created a progress dialog will show how close the movie is to being finished If the movie is cancelled before it is completed there will still be a valid video it just will not play the entire results Real time Movies Movies can also be created in real time This means that it will record while the user is interacting with the results and it will record everything the user sees except for the cursor The disadvantage of this type of movie is that it will play back only as smooth and of the same quality as that which the user who created the movie saw So if the scene is very complex and the movie creator s computer cannot view the results smoothly the resulting movie s play back will suffer as well To create a movie of this type press the record button O A file chooser dialog will prompt for the file name of
35. Door18 P Room29 Room30 Room31 Room32 Room33 Room34 e Gen m P Ho eEaboO ce 4 r Polygon Point 1 12 564 9 277 0 m Figure 1 An example of the graphical user interface Pathfinder also includes a second program designed specifically for high performance visualization of 3D time history The 3D Results program is shown in Figure 2 In this image occupants are moving on a model that used an imported floor plan image Pathfinder User Manual db Potrinder nen i i EE Eile Agents Scene View Debug Fx A Floor Separation m o set wall Height m U Reverse Time 0 49 1 23 Speed lx Framerate 625 0 fps Figure 2 An example of the 3D Results In addition to 3D visualization Pathfinder also provides output in the form of 2D time history plots of CSV comma separated values out files and a text summary of room clearing times and doorway flow rates An example time history plot can be seen in Figure 3 This plot shows the number of occupants in various rooms Pathfinder User Manual r Occupant Counts C Users thornton Desktop Yoel untitled von AS So File Edit View Mode Room18 be _ Room20 Number of Occupants in Selected Rooms Room21 Room23 50 00 Remaining Total ege Room E Room26 45 00 O Room27 Room35 Room28 Room29 40 00 Room30 30 37 Room31 35 00 es Room32 o Room33 30 00 Room34 J Room35 a Room36 O 25 00
36. Moor 14m o o m me DI II C L amp a a D I ba Dev Dev RW a Shows a stair that will not simulate correctly b Shows a stair that will simulate correctly Figure 23 Stair geometry requirements Stairs between edges One way to create stairs is to draw them between two pre existing rooms Stairs of this type will match the ends of the stairs exactly to the edges that they were drawn between which means that the tread rise and run may or may not match the actual slope of the stairs In Pathfinder the geometric slope of stairs is unimportant in the simulation but the specified tread rise and run are To create stairs between edges first ensure that both the connecting rooms are visible If the rooms are on different floors at least one room will have to be manually set visible which can be done through the right click menu in the Navigation View Next select the two point stair tool EB The property panel will display the stair creation properties as shown in Figure 24 The stairs can now be created in one of the three following ways e Manual Entry Set the desired stair width and for each edge on which the stairs should be created enter a point If the points are valid a preview stair will be shown in the 2D or 3D view and the Create button will enable Click the Create button to add the stairs e Two click Set the desired stair width Move the cursor over the first edge and a preview line similar to a thin door
37. OOLS emision 13 change an active DDr diia 13 Sekt AUT OOS ido E AR 14 EGS MOOI a ee ee e 14 A ee ee ee 14 POG TOW FOO ING road 14 Adding tnin Wal SCG TODOS er er atada 16 Kiel Te dl FOO NG rca 16 Separatine and Merging TOM anne 17 OBStrUCHONS A elei nn nennen 18 Arbitrarily Shaped Obstructions Desks Tables etc 18 ET EE 19 DOO e 20 TO DOORS ratas 20 TIC ee e Srta 21 EE 22 GEELEN 23 Stairs extending Tom one COSC nina anr 24 Kee 25 A A A ec 25 CHEATING EIVAT O ib 26 Klee 28 sn A ee 28 NOMNI ere EE 30 Connecting Disconnectine ROO Stern 30 Eeer 30 IMPOR ES eig 31 MOONE IM Ss een een ee 31 MDORINS CAD TIES Ai 32 Importing PyroSim and FDS files ooooccncooocnnncnnnonnnonaconnnnnccnnonaronnonononnnonaronnonaronnonanonoos 34 Working with Imported Data 34 Working with HMAC ES rinda das 34 Working with 3D CAD PyroSim and FDS Dies 34 eg la he RRE RE 35 Eine IN Uer ee dalla iaa 37 AA A A nn le 38 sn ME a a rede 38 E EEN 40 COSTOMIZIDE DECUD EE 41 Seel EEN 41 Creatine a Mew Denda VIO EE 41 e elt ACTIONS a nenne eos 42 GOTO Waypoint ac Masai 43 GOTO ROOMS CU dad 44 Goto Elevators acto EEN 44 EN gen EE fees 45 Adame Ree oe 45 Maivaualplace EE EE 45 GROUP aCe melt A rasen 46 PACE MSM le A EE 47 Redistributing Profiles and Behaviors ccccsescccccsseccccessccccesececeeecceeeesececsusecessuneceeseusesetsensces 47 5 Editing and Copying Objects nennen 49 Transforming and COPYING Objects
38. Room37 a Room38 2 F Room39 E a gt F Room40 Room41 15 00 F Room42 a Room43 10 00 Room44 F Room45 F Room46 5 00 F Room47 F Room48 0 0 Room50 0 0 10 00 20 00 30 00 40 00 50 00 60 00 70 00 30 00 90 00 Room51 Time in Seconds 4 MM p Figure 3 An example time history graph Model Representation The movement environment is a 3D triangulated mesh designed to match the real dimensions of a building model This movement mesh can be entered manually or automatically based on imported data e g FDS geometry Walls and other impassable areas are represented as gaps in the navigation mesh These objects are not actually passed along to the simulator but are represented implicitly because occupants cannot move in places where no navigation mesh has been created Doors are represented as special navigation mesh edges In all simulations doors provide a mechanism for joining rooms and tracking occupant flow Depending on the specific selection of simulation options doors may also be used to explicitly control occupant flow Stairways are also represented as special navigation mesh edges and triangles Occupant movement speed is reduced to a factor of their level travel speed based on the incline of the stairway Each stairway implicitly defines two doors These doors function just like any other door in the simulator but are controlled via the stairway editor in the user interface to ensure that no geometric errors
39. To add a Goto Elevators action click the Add Goto Elevators button from the behavior actions list The creation panel will appear as in Figure 52 Either click the Elevators link to specify the desired elevators with a dialog or left click the desired elevators in the 3D or 2D View Right click in the 3D 2D View to finish selecting the elevators and create the action or click Create Create Add to Behavior Goto Elevators Elevators Elevator00 Cancel Figure 52 Goto Elevators creation panel 44 Pathfinder User Manual Wait action A Wait action tells an occupant to wait in their current location for a certain amount of time Once that time has elapsed they will begin their next action The manner in which they wait will vary depending on their most recent destination For instance if their previous destination was a waypoint they will try to stay close to the center of the waypoint If the previous destination was a room they will try to move toward a wall of the room away from all doors This allows other occupants to enter the room If their previous destination is an elevator they will first move toward the walls as in waiting in a room and then stand still when the elevator travels In all cases a waiting occupant will move out of the way of occupants headed toward a destination unless the destination overlaps with the waiting occupant s most recent destination To add a Wait action click Add Wait from the behavior
40. Z 2 4m Area 33 9567 m Name 3 dn Floor 2 4 m 7 Min Filter CURR_FLOOR Pers 0 Visible z Max Filter NEXT_FLOOR Density 0 0 pers m Figure 10 Floor property panel Rooms Rooms are open space on which occupants can freely travel Each room is bounded on all sides by walls Rooms can be drawn so that they touch each other but an occupant can only travel between them if they are connected by a door Only one room can occupy a given space at any time so if one room is drawn overlapping another the overlapping area will be subtracted from the old room and given to the new Rooms can also be merged into one separated into constituent parts and have internal thin boundaries drawn in them These features are discussed in the following sections Adding new rooms Pathfinder provides two tools for adding new room geometry 14 Pathfinder User Manual e Polygonal Room Tool The Polygonal Room tool A allows for the creation of complex shapes with any number of vertices Left click anywhere in the model to set the first point and continue left clicking to add more points to the polygon When at least three points are defined right clicking will close the polygon and complete the shape Alternatively x y coordinates can be entered from the keyboard with the Add Point and Close Polygon buttons from the property panel Add Point A s m Close Polygon Yi 0 0 m Cancel Polygon Figure 11 Drawing a room with the polygon tool
41. actions list The creation panel is shown in Figure 53 The Wait Time specifies the amount of time they will wait at their current location Cancel Add to Behavior Goto Elevators Wait Time 10 05 Figure 53 Wait creation panel Adding Occupants Occupants can be placed individually in the 3D or 2D view distributed in a rectangular region of a particular room or distributed through the entire area of a room or multiple rooms Individual placement Individual occupants can be added to the model with the Add Occupant tool a Occupants can only be placed in pre existing rooms and stairs and cannot overlap other occupants or room boundaries Left click a desired position with the mouse or enter an x y z coordinate and press the Create button from the property panel to place an occupant xi 0 7473 m Y 0 26703 m Profile IDer y Z 0 0 m Create Figure 54 Adding occupants individually 45 Pathfinder User Manual Group Placement Groups of occupants can be added to the model with the Add Occupant Group tool tal The occupants are distributed throughout this region using parameters in the property panel as shown in Figure 55 e Random Uniform Placement Random placement places occupants randomly within the designated area such that no overlapping of occupants occurs If the number of desired occupants is too great to accomplish this a prompt will ask whether or not to continue with overlapping occupants Uni
42. ample of the graphical user Interface 1 An example of the 3D TEILEN 2 Get 3 A PP een 6 Ale OPE ON E 8 PCO TING a OUDS escorpio notado lovin 10 Hoor reato Danel EEN 12 Auto floor creation and Sorting sirsiran e ENEE E E E N 12 A APA a E A 13 Floor property Daniel assess seran ee ee 14 Drawing a room with the polygon tool 15 Drawing a room with the rectangle tool 15 Adding a thin wal to a TOO E 16 o A ee ee nee 16 Special case for drawing a thin wall 17 Figure 16 Merging PrOOMG ccccssccsscsccsscesccsscessesecesecsecesecsecesessecesssseceeseseceeeeseceeesseceeetseceestsecasetseeaeeeseees 17 Heure 17 Sepa a Une JOB I ae een 18 Fl2ure Ss Creatine an COS CMC UO M ee ee 19 Aire 19 SUC ACU NS Walls nen ee ee nee 19 Figure 20 Door tool property panel sirssennsirenisiennn erii innie ir enn EIAN EE A aa iiia 20 Figure 21 Adding a thin door to connect two touching rooms 21 Figure 22 Adding a thick door in the empty space between two rooms 22 Figure 23 Stair geometry regulrements 23 Figure 24 Property panel for the two point Stair tool 23 Figure 25 Drawing stairs with the two point Stair tool 24 Figure 26 Property panel for the one point stair tool 24 Figure 27 Drawing stairs using the one point Stair tool sessssseeseesererssenssreessersseresrerssereserssrersseresereseeree 25 AU Creating a Elevato een PP enn ee eee ene 27 FleUrE 29 NEWEIEVITOF dalo is rones 27 Flieure 30 Elevator representa
43. amps and stairs is that ramps do not affect the speed at which occupants travel Elevators Pathfinder supports elevators in egress mode operation which is based on current thinking described in Using Elevators In Fires The basic operation of elevators in evacuations can be summarized as follows e ach elevator has one discharge floor This is where the elevator starts at the beginning of the simulation and where it will take occupants it has picked up e Each elevator has at least one pickup floor These are floors where the elevator will pick up occupants that it will take to the discharge floor e An elevator is called on a pickup floor by an occupant when they come within 5 m of the elevator door e The elevator uses a priority system to serve called floors By default floors are served from top to bottom however other floors can be given higher priority to simulate fire floors e When travelling to a pickup floor the elevator can change to another pickup floor mid flight if a higher priority floor is called that is above the elevator s current location Richard W Bukowski and Fang Li Using Elevator In Fires Consulting Specifying engineer July 21 2010 25 Pathfinder User Manual e Once an elevator has picked up occupants it will only travel to the discharge floor before letting the occupants off It will not travel to any other floor to pick up more occupants Creating Elevators Elevators can be made after
44. arthest from its goal The average distance to goal is the average of all occupants distances to their respective goals The Debug button launches a runtime visualization that shows the progress of the simulation as it is taking place This function is different from the Results button which launches the 3D visualization view for simulation results A simulation can also be paused resumed and cancelled at any time Simulating via command line Simulations can also be run through the command line without loading the user interface To do so open a command prompt Run testsim bat located in the Pathfinder install folder The only argument is the input txt file generated by Pathfinder Pathfinder automatically creates this file when performing a simulation through the user interface The input file can be manually created in the user interface by going to the File menu and selecting Save Simulator Input When running a simulation this way it may also be desirable to manually create the geometry file for visualization To do this from the File menu choose Save Imported Geometry File NOTE Running a simulation through the command line will not provide a management dialog through which the simulation can be paused and resumed Stopping and Resuming a Simulation When running a simulation there is the option to pause and resume but this requires Pathfinder to be running the entire time Sometimes the need arises to be able to stop a
45. benefit over the translation tool in that the location automatically snaps to an existing room or stair as when adding an agent using the agent dropper tool Figure 72 Agent handles 55 Pathfinder User Manual Waypoint handles When a waypoint is selected five handles are displayed as shown in Figure 73 The center handle allows the waypoint to be moved to another location similarly to the occupant handle The four handles on the perimeter of the circle can be used to change the arrival radius of the waypoint Pathfinder 2011 untitled s PTAS File Edit Model View Simulation Results Help BeHlu ey x Mm O eo a AN AR E Behavior Goto Any Exit Action Goto 4 2 3 5 0 Arrival Radius 2 33892 m PP Add Goto Waypoint 0 a o a D l a ud si 4 3 a Dev o E 7 239 5 61 5 05 m Figure 73 Waypoint handles 56 Pathfinder User Manual 6 Model Analysis Pathfinder contains some useful tools to analyze various properties of a model Measuring Distances Distances can be measured by using the measuring tool To do so select the measuring tool from the 3D or 2D view Left click a series of points to define a path along which to measure a distance When done defining points right click The cumulative point to point distance is displayed in a dialog box When measuring distances in the 3D view the distance is taken as the actual distance between snapped
46. built in drawing tools refer to the section Rooms on page 14 Automatic room extraction from 2D DXF data works similarly to extracting rooms from 3D DXF data As in 3D extraction the Extract floors tool E is used In addition the user must click a point in the model with the tool and one room will be automatically extracted The main difference from 3D extraction is that the clicked point must not lie on any 3D imported faces marked for floor extraction instead it must be in empty space or on the background rectangle imported with a 2d floorplan The clicked point should also be surrounded by imported 2D lines These lines will form the boundary of the resulting room For this reason any lines that do not contribute to the room s boundary such as notations symbols etc should be deleted hidden or excluded from floor extraction prior to clicking the extraction point To manually exclude imported geometry from floor extraction select the geometry and from the property panel deselect Include in room extraction When determining which imported geometry to extract rooms from the 2d room extraction tool will automatically exclude hidden objects and those manually excluded Once the desired point is clicked the surrounding 2D lines looking at the model from the Top View will be projected along the Z axis onto the active floor s working Z plane These projected lines will then be used to define the room around the clicked point If the surro
47. chooser the type of movie can be specified as an Audio Video Interlaced AVI file or a Windows Media Format WMV file AVI files can be rendered as uncompressed or compressed WMV files can only be compressed Uncompressed files will be very large but will be of the highest quality Compressed files are much smaller in size but with some reduced quality To create compressed AVI files video codecs must be installed on both the computer that will create the file and the computer that will play back the file Some popular AVI codecs include Xvid Divx and ffdshow WMV files however do not require special codecs to be installed on either the source or destination computers but they will only work on Windows machines unless special software is installed on another platform Once the filename and type of video has been chosen a dialog will show some movie making options as in Figure 84 a The options are as follows e Video Size specifies the resulting video s dimensions This is only limited by the maximum size of a viewport on the computer s video hardware with some codecs however each dimension must be a multiple of 2 or 4 If you have trouble creating a movie try making the size a multiple of 4 The Use window size button will set the size to the 3D window s current size e Framerate determines how smoothly the video will play back The higher this number is the smoother the playback at the expense of longer rendering time to create the
48. cion didas 28 Ee EE Property Dane ees 28 FISure 32 Elevator Priority dialog ee ae een 29 Poured Elevator Levels dialog u nee 30 Figure 34 An exit e TE 31 Figure 35 Importing a background Image 32 FIEUTE Se DT UNE COS BOX EE 33 Figure 37 Drawing rooms over a background Image 34 Figure 38 Property panel for the floor extraction tool 35 Figure 39 A room extracted from a PyroSim Pie 35 vil Figure 40 Figure 41 Figure 42 Figure 43 Figure 44 Figure 45 Figure 46 Figure 47 Figure 48 Figure 49 Figure 50 Figure 51 Figure 52 Figure 53 Figure 54 Figure 55 Figure 56 Figure 57 Figure 58 Figure 59 Figure 60 Figure 61 Figure 62 Figure 63 Figure 64 Figure 65 Figure 66 Figure 67 Figure 68 Figure 69 Figure 70 Figure 71 Figure 72 Figure 73 Figure 74 Figure 75 Figure 76 Figure 77 Figure 78 Figure 79 Figure 80 Figure 81 Room extraction results from an imported 2D Floorplan s seessssssssssssresessrrsesrerssrrerssrrressrereseeress 36 Using the door tool de UE Ree Tele EE 37 et Geng ge e Ee 38 Amexampleol RB lee Re Eer 39 Using a Ustom OccUpant DIO fil oa 41 New Benavi or EE ee 42 Behavior Property Panel nie 42 EXE ENOOSET e 42 BEHAYIOr ACTIONS IST EE 43 Example of action order for a behavior ccoooccccconnccnncnnccnnnnnnonnnonaronnonanonnnnononnnonanonnonanonnnonancnnnnos 43 Goto Way DOInt creation panel 44 Goto Rooms creation Panel iin 44 Goto Elevators cr
49. common warnings include e Warning if stairs are not connected to rooms at both ends e Warning if stairs or doors overlap along an edge 59 Pathfinder User Manual e Warning if stairs or doors create a non manifold topology e g a stair connects to the inside of a room rather than an outer wall or connects to two rooms on one of its ends Problematic objects can be quickly selected by right clicking a group in the tree that has a warning or error icon and selecting Select invalid objects from the right click menu In addition if the warning on a component indicates that it interferes or overlaps with other components the objects with which it interferes can be quickly selecting by right clicking the object with the warning and selecting Select conflicting components from the right click menu As a general note if the warning Edge is adjacent to more than 2 triangles appears when simulating an option to click Cancel appears to highlight the navigation components causing the warning 60 Pathfinder User Manual 7 Simulating Parameters The Simulation Parameters dialog shown in Figure 77 provides a way to control certain features of the simulation r Simulation Parameters Time Output Paths Behavior misc Behavior Mode SFPE Flow based e Collision Handling Max Room Density 3 55 pers m Door Boundary Layer 15 0 cm Door Flow Rate O Use Max Flow Calculate from Density Min D
50. creating the rest of the model Perform the following steps to create the elevator refer to Figure 28 1 Draw a room preferably on the discharge floor that defines the shape of the elevator 2 Draw all doors on the boundary of the base room that occupants will use to enter and exit the elevator on every floor 3 Right click the base room and from the right click menu select Create Elevator This will show the New Elevator dialog as shown in Figure 29 4 In the New Elevator dialog enter all parameters for the elevator e Name the name of the elevator e Nominal Load the number of people in a full load estimated Please read the Nominal Load section below for details e Elevator Geometry the base room that defines the elevator shape This defaults to the room that was originally selected e Travel Direction a vector defining the direction the elevator can travel This vector will automatically be normalized NOTE the elevator can travel negatively against this vector e Elevator Bounds this defines the bottom most and top most floors the elevator can connect to e Elevator Timing this defines a basic timing model used to calculate the travel times for the elevator to travel from the discharge floor to each pickup floor e Acceleration Elevator Timing optional the acceleration of the elevator e Max Velocity Elevator Timing the maximum velocity that the elevator can accelerate to e Open Close Time El
51. creation are enabled organization of the model is shown in Figure 8 1 A new model is created The floor height is left at the default of 3 m 2 Room00 is drawn at Z 0 m and is auto placed in Floor 0 0 m 3 Room01 is drawn at Z 1 5 m and is auto placed in Floor 0 0 m 4 Stair01 is drawn connecting Room00 to Room01 and is auto placed in Floor 0 0 m 5 Room02 is drawn at Z 1 5 m A new floor Floor 3 0 m is auto created and Room02 is auto placed in it 6 Stair02 is drawn connecting Room02 and Room00 and is auto placed in Floor 3 0 m 7 Room02 is drawn at Z 7 5 m A new floor Floor 6 0 m is auto created and RoomO3 is auto placed in it Floors tr Floor 3 0 m Roomoz fi Stair 3 47 Floor 0 0 m as Room00 an Boom01 e B Gitar di Floor 6 0 m EN Boom03 Figure 8 Auto floor creation and sorting In this example only rooms and stairs were created The floors were automatically created and the rooms and stairs were automatically sorted into the appropriate ones Working with older files Auto floor creation and sorting is a new feature in Pathfinder 2011 When an older model is opened the original floors and organization is maintained In some cases the older model may not be sufficiently organized into appropriate floors however since it used to be done manually Automatic floors can sti
52. culation This technique often leads to more conservative answers but is not necessarily consistent with the assumptions presented in the SFPE Guide to Fire Protection Engineering The Steering mode supports the following options Collision Handling behaves just like in SFPE mode except this is on by default for Reactive Steering Inertia forces occupants to ramp up to their maximum speed and down to a stop Steering update interval specifies how often in simulation time to update the steering calculation This could also be considered to be the cognitive response time of each occupant The higher this number the faster the simulation will run as long as the simulation time step is less but the poorer the decision making skills of each occupant will be Starting and Managing a Simulation To run a simulation on the Model menu click Run Simulation 0 The simulation will begin and the Run Simulation dialog shown in Figure 78 will appear 63 Pathfinder User Manual Sim Time s Run Time s Occs Rem Occs Total DTG Max m l DTG Avg m running simulation SIMULATION BEGIN Y Show results when finished Y Pause if occupants appear to be stuck Debus Rense raue Figure 78 The Run Simulation dialog showing a partially complete simulation In this dialog the abbreviation DTG stands for distance to goal The maximum distance to goal represents distance to goal for the occupant f
53. de Seo cemey Ror 7m un Cay Figure 29 New Elevator dialog 27 Ares 12 25 mt Pers o Density 0 0 perajal Pathfinder User Manual Elevator Representation Once an elevator is created it will appear in the model as a series of rooms and doors connected by a transparent elevator shaft as shown in Figure 30 There is one room and set of doors for each floor to which the elevator can connect In the 3D and 2D Views each room is shaped the same as the base room that created the elevator In the Navigation View each room is shown under the elevator rather than the Floors top node In addition each set of doors for the room is shown under the room By default each of the rooms is named after the floor on which it connects If the elevator is disconnected completely from a floor as discussed in Connecting Disconnecting Floors the room is named lt Disconnected Level gt E Pathfinder 2011 Creating Elevator pth ple File Edit Model View Simulation Results Help o s DN Fr olo me oma Wees ANA an 7 D z PEE Ess x Bounds 5 50 m 9 00 m Occ Separabon 30 48 m Discharge Fko Fear 00m e 7 mer een 1 Y Bonde 0 00m 3 50 m Open Delay 20s Foor Priorty ino lt oen 5 E Prones nen 7Baumds 0 00m 15 00m Cose Delay 5 05 Level Data Ed q Occupants 2 Desen SW a lena 4 Pi 3 H teve t20 m D 5 Poors aid SC de E E ia a Elevators o dr Zi x S Bee 8 H a el u Level 0 0 m
54. ding sub groups Pathfinder User Manual The Floor box above the view can be used to manage floors Any time a room stair ramp or door is created it is added to a floor group matching the current selection in the Floor box Changing the selection in the Floor box will cause the newly selected floor to be shown and all other floors to be hidden Also the Z property for all drawing tools will automatically default to the height of the floor currently selected in the Floor box The visibility of any object or group of objects can always be manually set using the right click context menu This technique is useful if you want to show two floors at the same time e g when creating a stairway 3D and 2D Views The 3D and 2D views as shown in Figure 4 are the main views in which drawing is performed in Pathfinder Both views contain tools to draw egress geometry and navigate in a model The main difference between the two views is that the 3D view allows the model to be viewed from any direction whereas the 2D view only allows viewing from one orthographic direction In addition the 3D view contains no snap grid whereas the 2D view does The 3D view is entered by selecting the perspective camera Q and the 2D view is entered by selecting one of the orthographic cameras CH el or At the top of the view is several buttons that show different camera modes display options and navigation modes The panel under this is known as the property panel a
55. e original using the rotate parameters Similarly an array of objects can be made by specifying a value greater than 1 for the Copies field in the property panel The array is created by rotating each previous copy by the rotate angle If copying rooms and resulting copies overlap one another the most recent copies take precedence over earlier ones meaning that earlier ones will have area subtracted from them An array is shown in Figure 65 D re EE BDO see D pe EEE Bop Se Figure 65 Creating an array of objects using the rotate tool Mirroring To mirror one or more objects about a plane select the objects and click the mirror tool 00 from the 2D or 3D view The property panel for the mirror tool is shown in Figure 66 Mirror Plane Normal Mode EEE Mirror R Axis aligned X 0 0 m Copy Mode Cancel y Custom x 0 0 m Y 0 0 m zZ 0 0 m W 0 0 m Figure 66 Property panel for the mirror tool The object can be mirrored either manually or graphically e Manually Select Normal Mode and enter the plane about which to mirror This can be an axis aligned plane or a custom plane specified by the plane equation ax by cy d 0 Next click Mirror e Graphically This is performed most easily in one of the 2D views The mirror plane is always perpendicular to the camera s view plane Defining the plane requires two mouse clicks that define two points in the plane The steps for mirroring graphically are shown in Figure 67
56. eation panela anne as Dabei 44 AECH elei ele EE 45 Ee MEIER 45 Add Rectangular Group of Occupants Property Panel ccccccecccssesecesesccsesseeecsseueceeeneeeeenees 46 Editing the distribution Of Profiles iso 46 Distributing occupants in arectangularregion 47 Distributing occupants through entire rooms ssssssssssseessersssrrssereseresserssresseerssrrosrersrersreresreese 47 Edit Group DIStHDUHONS AO Prairie o 48 Propertv pa eltorthe translate LOO lustre iso 49 GrapniGally MOVING Aly ODIO Cati en a ae a od 50 Creating an array of objects by using the translate tool 50 Property panel for the rotate tool 51 FRO GATS amo cial 51 Creating an array of objects using the rotate tool 52 Probertyubanel Tor the miito TOON sis bos tias 52 Mirrorine an ODject an ae ooo cada 53 Mamnpulator NES ee ee 53 Handle Property panel een een en ee 54 Beie gata ia A ds 54 AAA Le A O eat et 55 Agentianales ca dd 55 WV AV DOIN CGN CCS erior ran diri 56 connectivity examples tone ete we 57 select Connected Components dialog nina ea 58 Selecting an entire graph of connected COMPONENMS ooccccnnccncnnccnonacononacnnonananonacnnonacnonaranonacnanon 59 The Behavior tab of the Simulation Parameters Dialog 61 The Run Simulation dialog showing a partially complete simulation ssosssssessseseseesseessreresee 64 Listing for an example summary report Pie 66 A time history plot for door flow rates occcconoricnonocionenaoronconor
57. ed in four groups Profiles ES Default 349 Behaviors bef Goto Any Exit KN Occupants fia Elevators 1 The Imported geometry group stores items that were imported from an image or an FDS PyroSim or DXF model These objects do not affect the simulation but are carried through to help with results analysis They can also be used to automatically extract rooms er m 2 The Profiles group contains the occupant profiles that have been og a created using the Edit Profiles dialog SR 3 The Behaviors group contains user defined scripts that tell E Landing occupants how to behave CP So 4 The Occupants group contains every occupant in the model If Sen Floor 3 0 m occupants are added to the model using a tool that adds more than one occupant at a time they will be collected in a sub group 5 The Elevators group contains evacuation elevators in the model The Floors group defines the floors in the model and each floor contains all geometry necessary to create a movement mesh including room stairway ramp door and exit definitions The buttons directly above the Navigation View perform the following actions Auto Expand Selection when an object or occupant in the 3D or 2D view is selected this action will expand the groups of the Navigation View as needed to show the selected object Collapse All collapses all expanded groups in the Navigation View Expand All expands all groups in the Navigation View inclu
58. end from an edge and exactly match the specified tread rise and run They will stop when they meet a specified criterion or reach another room The property panel for the one click stair tool as shown in Figure 26 provides four ways to terminate the stairs e Step count The stair will have this many steps e Total rise The stair will be this tall in the Z direction e Total run The stair will be this length in the XY plane e Total length The hypotenuse of the stair will be this length we lo 0m Stair Width 121 92 cm Tread Rise 17 78 cm Step Count 17 0 O Total Run 5 0m 30m Doori Width STAIR_WIDTH Es ES em Tread Run 27 94 cm O Total Rise 10 0 m Total Length 5 0 m 20 0 m Door2 Width STAIR_WIDTH Figure 26 Property panel for the one point stair tool To create stairs in this manner select the one point stair tool ES The property panel will show If the tread rise is positive the stairs will extend up from the starting edge and if it is negative the stairs will go down Similarly if the tread run is positive the stairs will extend away from the room and if it is negative the stairs will extend in toward the room Another way to change these values is to hold CTRL on the keyboard to make the tread rise negative and hold SHIFT to make the run negative Now the Stairs can be created in one of the three following ways e Manual Entry Set the desired stair width tread rise tread run and termination cr
59. ensit Cancel Figure 77 The Behavior tab of the Simulation Parameters Dialog The Time tab provides the following options Time Limit can be used to automatically stop the simulation after a set simulation time Time Step Size controls the resolution of simulation time steps Increase the time step size to speed up simulations reduce the time step size to ensure simulation accuracy The Output tab provides the following options 3D Output Freq controls the time between 3D output file updates Increasing this value causes data to be written less often leading to less disk usage and run faster simulations no file write delay but can produce a misleading 3D results visualization In the 3D results visualization occupants will move in a straight line between two data points if the two points are far apart in time an occupant might appear to pass through an obstruction when it actually navigated properly CSV Output Freq controls the time between CSV output file updates Increasing the value causes fewer rows to appear in the resulting CSV files i e lower data resolution This option has a negligible effect on simulation performance or disk usage Runtime Output Freq controls the time between simulation status updates in the Run Simulation dialog This option has a negligible effect on simulation performance or disk usage 61 Pathfinder User Manual The Paths tab provides the following options Max Agent Rad
60. evator Timing the sum of the door opening and closing times Each value will be taken as half of this 5 Press OK to create the elevator If necessary Pathfinder will automatically subtract holes in existing geometry to make space for the elevator shaft It will also delete existing rooms doors stairs and ramps in the elevator shaft Pathfinder will ask before making any of these changes In order for occupants to use elevators they must explicitly be told to do so through their behaviors as discussed in Behaviors NOTE The timing values can be re calculated using a new timing model by selecting the elevator selecting Edit next to Level Data in the property panel and then selecting Reset in the level data dialog 26 Pathfinder User Manual D S Hulo xo 0 ror page 8 pp aO ON a A a l Floor Creation Sorting New Egress Components ER Y Auto sart egress components Group ap Foor 0 6m ay Foor 120m BIBSERkKKERS Human Se 18 887 4 763 23 351 m X Bounds 5 50 m 9 00 m l Y Bounds 0 00m 3 50m D FR Ponies Wc mm 7 Bounde 0 001 0 00 m 4010 FDBe kkkRSsHunse 26 203 19 663 0 001 m Figure 28 Creating an Elevator New Group Change Group Delete Rename Sort into Floors Select Occupants Select Connected Components Add Occupants Create Elevator Separate Create an Elevator basec Set Z mm Hi
61. file s length unit Detected Geometry Type 2D Floorplan Geometry types to import 4 Lines 193 detected in Model Bounds Preview Model Width 0 0836406 m Faces 13 detected Model Depth 0 0451196 m 4 Move geometry toz 0 0m Model Height 0 0 m Flatten so geometry lies in one plane I Add a blank rectangle to obscure lower floors Color lt Back Next gt Finish 3 Figure 36 Dxf unit dialog box Choose Finish to import the file All imported elements will be added to the Imported Geometry node in the Navigation View The grouping structure will include the model level the layer level and all entities distributed within the layer If both lines and faces were included in import and an entity contained both lines and faces in the CAD file the entity is split into two in Pathfinder one with the lines and one with the faces NOTE In versions prior to Pathfinder 2012 1 DXF import allowed a background image to be created that could be passed through to the 3D results viewer While this option is no longer available both imported line and face data is now sent directly to the 3D results viewer instead eliminating the need for a background image 33 Pathfinder User Manual Importing PyroSim and FDS files Both PyroSim and FDS files can be imported into Pathfinder To import one of these file types select Import under the File menu Then select the appropriate FDS or PSM file The imported
62. form placement places occupants in an orderly hex pattern allowing greater occupant densities before overlap occurs Again a prompt will ask whether to continue with overlap if the density is too great e Count Density This option specifies whether to place a set number of occupants or place enough occupants to achieve a certain density Several template densities are provided and Custom can be selected from the densities drop down menu to enter a new value e Profile This option allows a distribution of profiles to be set for the occupants such as specifying that 25 of the added occupants should be females lt 30 years old 30 children etc The label shows the currently set distribution and if there is more than one profile defined in the model the value can be clicked to edit the distribution This will open a dialog as shown in Figure 56 e Behavior Like the Profile option this option allows the distribution of behaviors to be set Placement Uniform Random Count 19 Profile Females 30 yr j j 1 Density Custom 0 464515 m2 pers Behavior Goto Any Exit Figure 55 Add Rectangular Group of Occupants Property Panel Total distribution 100 0 Clear Distribute Evenly Cancel Figure 56 Editing the distribution of profiles Once the properties have been set click drag to draw the filling rectangle Both points of the rectangle must lie in the same room 46 Pathfinder User Manual MAD AS NS A v
63. gular obstructions in existing geometry To use this tool enter the desired wall width in the property panel and click or click drag the two points the wall is to pass through Holding the shift key will switch between alignment left and right of the defining line This tool is shown in Figure 19 2 Plane og m Select Thickness fo m kt KH o a S a G T Figure 19 Subtracting walls 19 Pathfinder User Manual Doors In Pathfinder occupants cannot pass between two rooms unless they are joined by a door Also the simulator requires that each occupant must have a path to at least one exit door Doors provide useful flow measurements in simulation results Also in the SFPE mode doors act as the primary flow control mechanism You can add doors using the Add a New Door tool When adding doors different parameters provide hints to Pathfinder for finding a valid door as shown in Figure 20 The Max Width parameter is used as a target width for the door If the full width isn t available Pathfinder will display a shorter door as you hover with the mouse The Max Depth parameter represents the depth of the door cavity and is used to determine how far apart two rooms can be and still be joined by a door Doors can be added between rooms that are separated by up to this distance X 14 70982 cm Max Width 81 28 cm Y 2 11066 cm Max Depth 25 4 cm zZ 501 811 cm Figure 20 Door tool property panel Thin Doors Thin do
64. he property panel and follow the same steps as above for moving an object Alternatively hold CTRL on the keyboard while defining the offset This will create a copy of the object that has been offset by the move distance Similarly an array of objects can be made by specifying a value greater than 1 for the Copies field in the property panel The array is created by offsetting each previous copy by the move distance If when copying rooms the resulting copies overlap one another the most recent copies take precedence over earlier ones meaning that earlier ones will have area subtracted from them An array is shown in Figure 62 Moves 2 80144 m Normal Mode Copy Move Move Y 1 44487 m Copy Mods Cops 3 Carne Med 0 0m HD Spee Bop Se CERES BOO ser Ic Figure 62 Creating an array of objects by using the translate tool Rotating To rotate one or more objects select the objects and click the rotate tool CH from the 2D or 3D view The property panel for the rotate tool is shown in Figure 63 50 Pathfinder User Manual Rotate Base X 4 66295 m Rotate Axis X 0 0 Normal Mode Rotate Rotate Base Y 2 9598 m Rotate Axis Y 0 0 Angle 0 02 5 Copy Mode Copies 1 SS Cancel Rotate Base Z 0 0 m Rotate Axis 1 0 Figure 63 Property panel for the rotate tool The object can be rotated either manually or graphically e Manually Select Normal Mode and enter the base of rotation the axis about which t
65. hfinder User Manual ERT Profiles ER f Behaviors rar Occupants Se Elevators D Floors Figure 6 Predefined groups Creating sub groups Sub groups can be created under Imported Geometry Occupants Elevators and Floors floors are discussed in the section Floors Groups can also be created in other sub groups To create a new group right click the desired parent group in the navigation view and select New Group or select New Group from the Model menu A dialog will display allowing the user to select the parent group which will automatically be selected if performed from the right click menu and a name for the new group Click OK to create the new group Changing groups An object can be moved from one group to another at any time To change an object s group drag the object to the desired group in the Navigation View or right click the object and select Change Group This will show a dialog that will allow the user to choose the new group The options shown for the new group will only be valid groups for which the group can be changed Select OK to change the group 10 Pathfinder User Manual 3 Creating Movement Space Pathfinder is built on the idea of creating floor space on which occupants can walk Every navigation component drawn in Pathfinder is some piece of flooring that can be travelled on which can range from floors to doorways to stairs Obstructions exist as holes in the floor The ma
66. higher priority This allows occupants of lower priority to move out of the way of those of higher priority This would be useful when simulating first responders that must be able to move easily through a crowd of occupants Priority values are completely relative For instance if three occupants meet of priorities 4 6 and 12 they will behave the same as if their priorities were O 1 and 2 respectively e Speed specifies the maximum speed an occupant may travel in an open room e Shoulder Width the diameter of the cylinder representing the occupant This is used for collision testing and path planning during the simulation This value will also affect how many occupants can be added to a room without overlapping The Advanced tab provides the following parameters e Height the height of the cylinder used for inter occupant collisions This is useful for limiting collisions that might occur between occupants on different floors when the floors have been modeled close together e Reduction Factor a Steering Mode Parameter that specifies how well an occupant may squeeze past others in tight corridors This factor should be specified as greater than O and less than or equal to 1 This factor is directly multiplied by the shoulder width during calculations so a Reduction Factor of 0 5 would lead to the occupant being able to squeeze to one half his shoulder width e Comfort Distance specifies the desired distance one occupant will try t
67. i SS 0800 ee I DE Y A Placement Unform C Random Count x Name Ocot Grop Probe Deep mj Speed Lime Oder D r Profle Defaut m O Densty 2 vista Eet crewest gt wl Sue 0 4558m Color E SN e BESoo B foakkaonn gt 0 5 2 0 m to 4 5 2 0 m Dim 4x4x0 m gt Figure 57 Distributing occupants in a rectangular region When any occupants are selected the property panel allows the occupants name profile behavior and color to be edited The occupants speed time delay and size are also displayed from the occupant s profile and can be made editable by selecting Custom from the profile drop down menu Placement in rooms In addition to distributing occupants in placement regions occupants can be distributed throughout entire rooms To do this select the desired rooms and choose Add Occupants from the Model menu or the right click menu as shown in Figure 58 This will bring up the Add Occupants dialog For an explanation of the dialog s options please see the section Group Placement Click the OK button after selecting the desired options to place occupants and exit the dialog New Group Change Group Delete Rename Sort into Floors Behavior Goto Any Exit Placement Uniform a Random 50 pers Select Occupants et sity oos 2 pers Select Connected Components Add Occupants
68. in egress components include rooms which are empty floor spaces bounded by walls doors which connect rooms on the same level stairs ramps which connect rooms on different levels and elevators which connect multiple levels Rooms can have any polygonal shape and can never overlap on the same level Doors can be either thick if they are occupying a doorway the area between two rooms or thin if they are simply connecting two touching rooms Stairs ramps are always rectangular and implicitly contain a thin door on each end to connect the adjacent rooms Elevators can be any shape and can travel in any direction To organize egress components Pathfinder provides the concept of floors which group together components at different Z locations Floors Floors are the primary method of organization in Pathfinder At their most basic level they are simply groups in which rooms doors stairs ramps and exits can be placed but they also control the drawing plane for most tools and filtering of imported geometry In every Pathfinder model at least one floor must exist and at any given time there is one active floor Whenever any navigation object is drawn it will either be placed in the active floor or a subgroup of the active floor By default when a new model is started there is one floor at Z 0 and additional floors are either created automatically depending on where the geometry is drawn or manually created In addition new navigation co
69. ing Behavior1 would first go to any elevator then go to Room00 then wait for 20 seconds then go to Room09 and finally exit The actions can be reordered at any time except exiting by dragging and dropping an action in the list in the Navigation View 3 49 Behaviors Goto Any Exit z a Behavior1 dla Goto Any Elewator Goto Room00 OO Wait 20 0 s u Goto Room09 Figure 49 Example of action order for a behavior Goto Waypoint action A Goto Waypoint action specifies that an occupant should go toward a specific point on the navigation mesh Once they arrive within a certain radius of the point they will move on to the next action in their behavior To add one of these actions click the Add Goto Waypoint button from the behavior actions list When adding the waypoint the creation panel will look like Figure 50 The Location specifies where the occupant must head This must be a point on the navigation mesh The Arrival Radius defines a circular area around the point These parameters can be entered manually in the creation panel or be filled in by clicking a point on the navigation mesh in the 3D or 2D View or click dragging to specify the location arrival radius When clicking or click dragging the action is created when the mouse button is released 43 Pathfinder User Manual x 2 17499 m Create Add to Behavior Goto Elevators Location Y 22 2619m Arrival Radius 1 5m 2 29 033
70. iterion Specify the starting point on the desired edge If the location is valid a preview stair will be shown and the Create button will enable Click the button to create the stairs e Single click Set the desired stair width tread rise tread run and termination criterion Move the cursor over the starting point on the room s boundary A preview stair will be displayed Single click to place the stairs 24 Pathfinder User Manual e Click drag Set the desired tread rise tread run and termination criterion Now click drag along the room s boundary to specify both the location and the width of the stairs Release the mouse to create the stairs E Pathfinder untitled Jag Deist oors D 7GeRESODO lt gt FREE Figure 27 Drawing stairs using the one point stair tool After creating stairs in this manner the Z location of the next floor or room will have to match the top of the stairs exactly for the next room to connect properly to the stairs This can be done by clicking the top of the stairs in the 3D or 2D view when choosing the Z location for either the floor or next room Ramps Ramps are nearly identical to stairs in how they are created and represented Like stairs they have two implicit doors at either end and always take the shape of a rectangular piece of geometry They also have very similar creation tools the two point ramp tool ns and the one point ramp tool K The key difference between r
71. ius Trim Error this parameter affects how accurately occupants can navigate through tight spaces when the occupants in the simulation have varying sizes The larger this value is the less likely an occupant is to navigate through a space that has a width close to their body diameter With larger values however the simulation will consume less memory and start faster sometimes much faster if every occupant has a different size Each occupant is guaranteed to be able to fit through a space with width equal to the occupant s diameter plus twice this value Constrain Edge Length controls the triangulation algorithm used to convert the rooms stairways etc into the triangulated mesh used by the simulator By default Pathfinder attempts to generate the fewest and largest possible triangles and this approach works well with Pathfinder s search algorithms However in some situations well behaved triangles can be useful e g to prevent extremely long thin triangles This value can be used to fatten these triangles The Max Edge Length parameter controls the maximum length of any single edge on a room boundary and the Min Angle criteria prevents the system from using triangles with any very small i e thin angles Using Min Angle values greater than 30 degrees can cause Pathfinder to freeze when it attempts to generate a simulation input file The Behavior tab allows you to set options for Pathfinder s two primary simulation modes SFPE and S
72. l When the object has been completed the drawn object s will be selected and the view will revert to the previous navigation tool e Sticky Mode Double click a drawing tool s button on the left panel before beginning to draw When the object is completed the same drawing tool will remain selected and more objects can be drawn with the tool To escape this mode press ESC on the keyboard and the previous navigation tool will be selected A green dot on the tool s icon indicates that the tool is currently in sticky mode Single clicking the tool s icon again will turn off sticky mode but keep the tool selected At any time while drawing the user can press escape which causes the current object to be cancelled and the previous navigation tool to be selected For each tool there are often two ways to create its object One way is to draw the object graphically using the mouse and keyboard The other is to interactively create the object by typing information such as coordinates widths etc in the tool s property panel The property panel will update the graphical preview immediately to reflect changes in the input This allows fine grained control in creating the object The individual drawing tools are discussed in Creating Movement Space View Options Pathfinder provides a variety of view options for displaying both navigation geometry and imported geometry that can also aid with drawing This includes options for rendering geometry di
73. level of detail rendering hardware skinning and vertex buffers One way to vastly increase speed while only somewhat sacrificing quality is to enable view dependent level of detail rendering This can be enabled by checking Enable Level of Detail under the View menu The idea behind this option is that objects far from the camera require less detail to portray the object realistically than for those close to the camera Pathfinder supports level of detail rendering by using progressive meshes which is a technology that enables the use of one model that represents thousands of detail levels with very little memory overhead Another improvement for most video cards is to use hardware skinning To enable it check Enable Hardware Skinning under the View menu In some cases hardware skinning can provide as much as a 2X speed improvement Some older graphics cards however will support it but will actually render slower when using it It is recommended that the user play with this option and observe the difference in frame rate shown at the bottom right in the status bar The last speed option available is using vertex buffers which is enabled by checking Enable Vertex Buffers under the view menu Hardware vertex buffers allow geometric data to be stored in video memory to reduce data that must be sent over the graphics bus from main memory which can increase rendering speed We have found however that integrated Intel video cards often have trouble
74. ll be used for existing navigation components by performing the following 1 Open the desired model 12 Pathfinder User Manual 2 Clear the selection so that the Floor Creation panel is visible Figure 7 Selection can be cleared by clicking in empty space in the 3D 2D or Navigation view 3 Ensure that the desired creation sorting options are enabled and that the correct floor height for the model is set 4 Select all the components that should be auto sorted if everything should be sorted select the Floors top node 5 Right click the selection and from the right click menu select Sort into Floors 6 The appropriate floors will be created and all selected items will be sorted into the appropriate floors NOTE This will not delete any existing floors If there are undesired existing floors first move the navigation components out of them to another floor that will be kept delete the undesired floors and then perform Sort into Floors Manually creating floors Floors can also be created manually at any time To do so click on the floor drop down box above the Navigation View and select lt Add New gt as shown in Figure 9 A dialog will open asking for the floor location Enter the Z plane location or click on a snap point in the 3D or 2D view and click okay This Z plane will be used to update the drawing tools working Z location when this floor is made active By default the name of the floor is Floor x whe
75. lumn shows how many times a component was entered by occupants For doors that served more than 1 occupant the FLOW AVG column shows the result of dividing the total use by the amount of time the room was in use LAST OUT FIRST IN 66 Pathfinder User Manual Door Flow Rates The door history file name_doors csv where name is the name of your saved PTH file provides the following information columns in each row time s The output time for this data row The frequency of output is controlled by the CSV Output Freq box in the Simulation Parameters dialog exited The number of occupants that have successfully passed through an exit door leaving the simulation doorname The number of occupants who have passed through door doorname since the last output doorname Q The number of occupants who are waiting in the queue to pass through door doorname at the current time This only includes occupants who have actually reached the door and are waiting to enter Occupants that are stacked up waiting to reach a door will not be counted This value is only meaningful in SFPE mode with collisions turned off To display this data as a time history plot click Door Flow Rates on the results menu Lo E wg Figure 80 A time history plot for door flow rates Room History File r j Flow Rates C Users thornton Desktop multi floor stairwell multi floor stairwell_doors csv File Edit View Mode Y
76. mmary report file contains information about the simulation geometry and usage information for each room stairway and door Figure 79 shows an example summary report file ROOM DOOR FIRST LAST UT TOTAL USE FLOW AVE pers s Foom l Foom Stair l Poom z Poombl1 Stair Z Foom l Foom StairO3 Poombz Poombl Stairo4 Hf Foom z Poombl Doord00 DoorOl ha oO 0 8 3 8 o e o 2 o 0 8 3 8 o e o 2 0 8 o a o in Stair l Stair l S5tair z S5tair z StairO3 StairO3 StairOd StairOd door 1 door Z Door03 door 1 door 2 Doord4 door door door door i id FP ID Bi Ad Bi P3 no B 00 Hd 00 Doro GO Ob Ob ba Ob FP E Figure 79 Listing for an example summary report file This file is shown in the Run Simulation dialog log window and it is also saved in the simulation directory and given the name name_summary txt where name is the name of your saved PTH file The first section shows how many components mesh triangles and occupants are in a model This information can be useful when considering the complexity of a simulation from the standpoint of the simulator The table gives a listing of each component doors rooms and stairs in the simulation For each component the FIRST IN column shows the simulation time when the first occupant entered that component LAST OUT shows the simulation time when the last occupant exited that component The TOTAL USE co
77. mponents are automatically sorted into the appropriate floor when drawn Automatically creating floors When nothing is selected in the model the Floor Creation panel is shown as in Figure 7 This panel controls the automatic creation of floors and automatic sorting of new objects into floors e Auto sort egress components If this is checked navigation components are automatically sorted into the appropriate floor when created or modified if this is unchecked new navigation components are placed in the group specified under New Egress Components and remain in this group until manually moved e Automatically create floors If this is checked floors are automatically created as navigation components are created and modified e Floor height This specifies the height at which new floors are automatically created If a navigation component is created or moved to a location that is at least this distance from the previous floor a new floor will be created at a multiple of this distance from the previous floor 11 Pathfinder User Manual e Group If Auto sort egress components is unchecked this drop down specifies the group floor for new navigation components Floor Creation Sorting New Egress Components Auto sort egress components Group ae Floor 0 0m V Automatically create floors Floor height 3 0 m Figure 7 Floor Creation panel The following scenario demonstrates how objects are organized when auto sort and auto floor
78. n anchor point can be specified on the image that indicates where that point is located in 3D space 31 Pathfinder User Manual Gi Configure Background Image y a Configure Background Image E 1 Choose image file C Documents and Settings okonski My Documents Gallery Main test png 1 Choose image file C Documents and Settings okonski My Documents Gallery Main test png 2 Set Scale The Scale determines how big the image will appear in the two points in the image that are a known distance apart and use the buttons Choose Point A and Choose Point B to set the two points Then specify their separation in model coordinates below Dist A to B A gt B angle Set Anchor Point The Anchor Point is a reference point that determines where to place the image in the model To set it make sure the button Choose Anchor Point is selected below and click on the image at the desired anchor location Then enter the coordinates for the corresponding point in the model Model X Model Y Model Z Image Brightness Opacity 2 Set Scale The Scale determines how big the image will appear in the two points in the image that are a known distance apart and use the buttons Choose Point A and Choose Point B to set the two points Then specify their separation in model coordinates below Choose Point A Choose Point B Dist AtoB 5 0m A gt B angle 90 0 Set Anchor Point The Anch
79. nd is a selection context sensitive panel If a drawing tool is selected it will show properties that can used to help draw If no drawing tool is selected and an object or several objects are selected this panel will show the properties relevant to the selection The panel of buttons on the left shows the drawing tools The small panel at the bottom displays messages relevant to the current tool QRO DOPE da rekta A 1 14 5241 m x2 2 65494 m L i Region Floor 0 0m Z Plane 0 0 m Y1 5 50509 m Y2 4 80232 m a B S NM E u i EA Rectangle Second corner 2 655 4 802 0 m width 17 179 m height 10 307 m Figure 4 3D and 2D views Navigating the 3D view Several tools are provided for navigating through the model in the 3D view including orbit roam pan and zoom tools Pathfinder User Manual The main navigation tool for the 3D view is the Orbit tool C By left clicking and dragging the model is rotated about its center point The scroll wheel can be used to zoom in and out on a specific point Holding SHIFT on the keyboard and then clicking and dragging will pan the camera and holding ALT while dragging will zoom in and out Another navigation tool in the 3D view is the Roam tool XK This tool allows the camera to move in and out of the model at will Without holding any keyboard keys dragging the mouse will cause the camera to rotate about the camera s location So dragging the m
80. negative Single click to place the door e Click drag Move the cursor over the edge of one of the rooms and click drag along the corresponding edge on the second room While dragging a preview door will be displayed connecting the two edges When the mouse is released a door is created between the edges of the two rooms where the diagonal of the rectangular door connects the two specified points Creating a door in this manner ignores all the properties in the tool panel The created door will appear as an orange rectangle in the 3D and 2D views as shown in Figure 22 When simulating thick doors have a special representation the area of the door will be partitioned in two and each half is attached to its touching room A thin door is placed in the middle of the area to represent the thick door Note that the extra area attached to each room is neglected when the area of the room is reported in its property panel but it is included during simulation 21 Pathfinder User Manual E 7GeekEsco B 7GeekEE co FU 20000 oO 00000 RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR PEGEL 7 gt e sgezegsgzs yl PODOCEPODO DSRRPRRRRERHL e IPR DRA d a 4 Figure 22 Adding a thick door in the empty space between two rooms Stairs Stairs in Pathfinder are represented by one straight run of steps The number of steps tread width tread height and width of the stairs are controlled by two stair tools One tool
81. o maintain with others nearby such as when waiting in queues 39 Pathfinder User Manual e Persist Time The amount of time an occupant will maintain an elevated priority when trying to resolve movement conflicts See the Technical Reference for more details e Collision Response Time when multiplied by an occupant s current speed this parameter controls the distance at which an occupant will start recording a cost for colliding with other occupants when steering e Slow Factor specifies a fraction of the occupant s speed at which they are considered to be slow A slow occupant will consider backward directions to separate with others while a fast moving occupant has a tighter more focused direction Each of these parameters can be set using a constant value a uniform distribution between two values or either a normal Gaussian or log normal distribution using a min max standard deviation and mean Each occupant in the Pathfinder model is linked to one profile Profile parameters can be edited in the profiles dialog at any time and the occupants using that profile will be automatically updated Occupants profiles can be set when adding the occupants or by selecting the occupants after being created and editing the Profile box in the property panel Seeds Each occupant has a unique random seed that determines the specific values generated from a profile distribution Each of these occupant specific values can be seen by
82. o rotate using the right hand rule and the angle to rotate Then click Rotate e Graphically This is performed most easily in one of the 2D views The rotate axis is automatically set to a vector normal to the camera Rotating requires three mouse clicks The first specifies the base of rotation The second defines a reference vector extending from the rotation base The third defines a second vector extending from the rotation base The rotation angle is the angle between these two vectors The steps for rotating graphically are shown in Figure 64 Rotate Base X 0 0m Rotate Anse 0 0 Rotate Base X 0 0m Rotate Asis 0 0 _ S Normal Mode Normal Mode Rome Rotate Base Y 0 0m Rotme Axe Y 0 0 Ange 0 0 Rotate Base Y 0 0m Rotate Axis Y 00 Amge 129 8978 Copy Mode x Copy Mode Carca Rotate Base Z 4 99902 m Rotate Aus Z 1 0 Rotate Base Z 4 99902m Rotate Anis Zi 1 0 D FHe EESHBoa See DEERE SEDO See 4 5 1 5 4 999 m Sand 1078 20s her Ban Bands 1 77m 659a Fes Z5and Ge 00m Dee 0 0 persim Dc Ko Han 3204 Figure 64 Rotating an object 51 Pathfinder User Manual Objects can also be copied using the rotate tool To do so select the rotate tool select Copy Mode from the property panel and follow the same steps as above for rotating an object Alternatively hold CTRL on the keyboard while defining the rotate properties This will create a copy of the object that has been rotated from th
83. og box shows the model s width depth and height based on the selected unit as a guide for selecting the unit Selecting Next brings up the options prompt 32 Pathfinder User Manual 2 Options The options prompt allows the user to specify more options for import Before this Pathfinder will attempt to discern if the CAD file contains a 2D Floorplan or a 3D Model and will select default values for the options based on the detected type e Lines check to import lines in the file default checked only for floorplans e Faces check to import faces in the file default checked only for 3D models e Move geometry to Z if checked all imported geometry will be offset so that the minimum Z lies in the specified Z plane default checked only for 2d floorplans e Flatten so geometry lies in one plane if checked all geometry will be scaled in the Z dimension by a very small scale 1e 9 This is useful for floorplans that have entities drawn in several planes This option will flatten them all into one plane default checked only for 2d floorplans e Adda blank rectangle to obscure lower floors if checked a solid rectangle of the specified color will be added to the model This is useful to obscure geometry located on lower floors The imported rectangle will be excluded from floor extraction by default default checked only for 2d floorplans Import 7116064 H dxf Import 7116064 H dxf Import Settings Import Options What is the
84. onnonariononaoronoonoronnonoricnonasiononas 67 3D Results for the multi floor stairwell example problem 68 viii Fisure 32 Floor location dialog for 3D result ad Figure 83 Multi floor layout options in 3D results FDS model courtesy of Andreas Niggemeyer Heure 842 IMOVIE option AI e Eo De Pathfinder User Manual 1 Introduction 1 Pathfinder is an agent based egress and human movement simulator It provides a graphical user interface for simulation design and execution as well as 2D and 3D visualization tools for results analysis Graphical User Interface Pathfinder includes a graphical user interface that is used primarily to create and run simulation models A screenshot of this user interface is shown in Figure 1 This screenshot displays a model that is being created from an imported floor plan image Pathfinder 2009 1 Beta untitled pth Geessen Bells xao Floor Floor 0 0 m emra a 5 St Se REAL N Tag X 10 0 m imported Geometry A Group Floor 0 0 m e ZPlane 0 0m Close Polygon Y 0 0m Profiles Cancel Polygon El E Occupants E Floors e Es Floor 0 0 m d WE o tiini a a rc d A lena J Pcr TEE ee o 28 Zen au Dn 3 Room Room04 Room05 Door01 Door02 Door03 Door04 Room15 Door05 Door06 Room16 Door07 Room17 Room13 Room20 W Door08 Door09 Door10 Room21 Door11 Door12 Room23 Room25 Room26 Door16 Room27 N Door17 Room23 i
85. ook like potential doorways and can be used to create a thick door in this area To use this feature select the door tool In the property panel for the tool as shown in Figure 20 the Max Width refers to the maximum width of the doorway to search for and Max Depth refers to the maximum thickness of the doorway These numbers may need to be larger than for the normal creation of a door to find potential doorways Once the appropriate parameters have been entered move the cursor over the desired doorway A door preview will be displayed If it doesn t adjust the search parameters in the property panel and try again If the door appears correctly left click the mouse button The doorway area of the room will be subtracted from the room and the thick door will be created in its place The process is shown in Figure 41 Figure 41 Using the door tool to fill a doorway 37 Pathfinder User Manual 4 Creating Occupants In Pathfinder occupants are composed of two parts profiles and behaviors The profile defines characteristics of the occupants such as speed radius avatar and color The behavior defines a sequence of actions the occupant will take throughout the simulation such as moving to a refuge area waiting and then exiting Profiles Pathfinder uses an occupant profile system to manage distributions of parameters across groups of occupants This system helps you control the occupant speed size and visual distributions To edit
86. or Point is a reference point that determines where to place the image in the model To set it make sure the button Choose Anchor Point is selected below and click on the image at the desired anchor location Then enter the coordinates for the corresponding point in the model Choose Anchor Point Model X Model Y el 100 Model Z Image Brightness Opacity fa Y ME af ge i 13 100 Bi Pathfinder untitled wad De Ce pi Wen Sege 4 She Fu um o nette QUAD BO en Sia keaa bb gt Name impares oeren 7 Valle Portes cupons floors a Poor m 15 Caer y Mar seat ong D a a a a et Dev a Figure 35 Importing a background image The imported image is added to the Imported Geometry gt Background Images group in the Navigation View The image can be edited and deleted from there In addition any number of images can be added to any floor Importing CAD files Pathfinder can also fully import files saved in AutoCAD s Drawing Exchange Format DXF as well drawing DWG files To import a DXF or DWG file under the File menu select Import and select the desired file After selecting a file a step by step dialog will open as shown in Figure 36 1 Units The first prompt asks the user to select the base unit in which the CAD file was created If the drawing was saved in a more recent file format the prompt will default to the stored unit type The dial
87. ors can be used to connect two rooms that touch one another as shown in Figure 21 A door is needed in this example to allow occupants to travel from one room to the other To create a door in this manner first select the door tool B and then use one of the following three methods e Manual Entry Enter the coordinates of the door in the property panel If the coordinates specify a valid door location the Create Door button will enable Click this button and a door no larger than Max Width will be created For thin doors Max Depth will be ignored e Single Click Move the cursor over the desired door location in the 3D or 2D view A preview door will be displayed if the cursor is on a valid edge The door displayed will lie either to the left or right of the hover point relative to the boundary edge depending on whether Max Width is positive or negative Single click to place the door The previewed door will then be added to the model e Click drag Move the cursor over the location of one end point of the door and click drag along the same edge While dragging a preview door will be displayed from the first to the second point When the mouse is released a door is created along the edge between the two specified points Creating a door in this manner ignores all the properties in the tool panel The created door will appear as a thin orange line in the 3D and 2D views as shown in Figure 21 20 Pathfinder User Manual E 6 xi
88. ot be considered for collision handling and will interpenetrate if their paths cross Max Room Density controls the density at which doors will no longer admit occupants into a room Using an artificially low value for this number will give faster evacuation times Using a 62 Pathfinder User Manual higher number 3 6 3 8 can cause extremely slow evacuation times Using values above 3 8 pers m can cause the simulation to get stuck due to the density dependent velocity calculation Door Boundary Layer is a global setting for boundary layer used only by the SFPE Flow based simulation mode Door flow rates in this mode are calculated based on door width This value is applied to both sides of a door to calculate the door width for the flow rate equation For example with a Door Boundary Layer setting of 150 mm a 1 0 m door would be reduced to a 0 7 m opening giving an F max Of 1 32 pers s m 0 7 m 0 924 pers s Door Flow Rate is a global setting for the algorithm used to calculate door flow rate By default the door flow rate calculation uses the max flow calculation 1 32 pers s m We By activating the Calculate From Density option the delay imposed by the door on the next occupant passing through will be governed by the density of the originating room of the last occupant to pass through the door at the moment that occupant exited the queue The Min Density and Max Density options allow you to bound the densities used in that cal
89. ouse up will make the camera look up and dragging it left and right makes it look left and right Holding CTRL while dragging will make the camera move forward and backward in the XY plane and holding ALT while dragging will make the camera move up and down along the Z axis This tool has a higher learning curve but is the most flexible viewing tool because it allows the camera to be placed anywhere in the model The other navigation tools include a pan drag tool which moves the camera left and right and up and down a zoom tool which zooms in and out of the model while click dragging and a zoom box tool which allows a box to be drawn that specifies the zoom extents Pathfinder can also be navigated while using the Selection manipulation tool t To Orbit the camera while in perspective view use a right click and drag combination Similarly use a middle click and drag to Pan in perspective view Navigating the 2D view Navigation in the 2D view is simpler than in the 3D view The selection tool not only allows objects to be selected if single clicked but it allows the view to be panned by middle or right clicking and dragging and the view to be zoomed by using the scroll wheel The drag and zoom tools are also separated into separate tools for convenience Resetting the view At any time the camera can be reset by pressing CTRL R on the keyboard or selecting Reset All tool i This will cause the entire model to be visible in the current
90. re x is the working plane of the floor If Set as active floor is selected in the new floor dialog the floor is set to be the active floor in the model after being created If Resort existing egress components into new floor is selected then all existing components that belong in the new floor will be moved to it EJ Pathfinder 2011 untitled New Floor File Edit Model View Simulation Results Help Floor 2 Floor 0 0m Y ome Ma a lt Add New gt Floor Creation 4 Auto sort e Automatica Enter Floor Location Set as active floor V Resort existing egress components into new floor CEN Floor heigh Floor 6 0 m NEE vo Elevators Finnrs a m gs r N j Figure 9 Adding a new floor Changing the active floor To change the active floor click the floor drop down box as shown in Figure 9 and select the desired floor This will make that floor active and all other floors non active Whenever the active floor is changed the following additional changes take place in the model e The floor all objects in the floor group and all occupants on the floor are set visible e Al other floors sub objects of other floors and occupants on those floors are set hidden 13 Pathfinder User Manual e The working plane of the room and wall subtraction tools is set to the working plane of the floor e Aclipping filter is applied to imported geometry so that only geometry
91. referring occupants Creating a new Behavior To create a new behavior right click the Behaviors node from the Navigation View and from the right click menu click Add a Behavior which will open the New Behavior dialog shown in Figure 45 In the New Behavior dialog enter a behavior name and optionally specify an existing behavior to base the new behavior on Using this option will copy all the actions from the existing behavior In versions of Pathfinder prior to 2012 1 individual parameters could not be customized If one parameter was to be customized all had to be customized 41 Pathfinder User Manual Mew Behavior Mame Behavior E Based On Goto Any Exit Figure 45 New Behavior dialog With the new behavior selected the behavior property panel will appear as shown in Figure 46 e Initial Delay This specifies an initial delay that makes the occupant wait at their starting position before moving to the next action If this link is clicked it will show a dialog where different distribution curves can be entered for the delay similar to those discussed in Profiles e Exits This specifies a set of exit doors the occupant is allowed to exit through during their final implicit exit action Clicking this link will open the exit chooser as shown in Figure 47 Initial Delay 0 05 Exits any Behavior Behavior Figure 46 Behavior Property Panel Choose l Exits Y Door20 Y Door22
92. result from a mismatch between stairways and the connecting doors Occupants are modeled as upright cylinders on the movement mesh and travel using an agent based technique called inverse steering Each occupant calculates movements independently and can be given a unique set of parameters maximum speed exit choice 3D model etc Pathfinder User Manual Simulation Modes Pathfinder supports two movement simulation modes In Steering mode doors do not act to limit the flow of occupants instead occupants use the steering system to maintain a reasonable separation distance In SFPE mode occupants make no attempt to avoid one another and are allowed to interpenetrate but doors impose a flow limit and velocity is controlled by density You can freely switch between the two modes within the Pathfinder user interface and compare answers More information about both modes is provided in the Technical Reference manual Limitations and Known Issues Pathfinder 2011 does not integrate results from a fire model or provide support for complex behaviors e g family grouping Dynamic geometry is only partially supported e g elevators are supported but opening closing doors escalators trains etc are not Elevators are supported in evacuation only circumstances They do not model a general purpose elevator system Simulator Name The name Pathfinder has been used previously to describe an egress simulator The original Pathfinder is a 2
93. rs in both the X and Y directions An example of this type of layout is shown in Figure 83 d By default labels appear above each floor so the floors can be easily identified but these labels can be hidden by opening the View menu and deselecting Show Labels 70 Pathfinder User Manual Bp Pathfinder ee AA nn Secada Pp Pathfinder ea i ees L Agents Scene Yiew Debug LH 6 9 Floor Separaton m 0 Set wal Height m 0 set OU 8889 free OU OU 88089 OO Time 005 435 Speedi1X Framerate 26 0 fps Time 005 435 Speed 1X Framerate 26 0 fps CES Oe mg mm Die Agents Scene Y ew Debug S A A Foor separation m 10 Set wal Height m 5 set CES vm Floor 7 60 sh mm 000000 00 008899 00 Time 005 435 Speech lx Framerate 28 8 fps c d Figure 83 Multi floor layout options in 3D results FDS model courtesy of Andreas Niggemeyer Time 0 05 4 35 Speed 1X Framerate 28 9 fps Animation playback To play back animation press the play button 9 As the animation is playing the time slider will move and the animation can be paused or stopped 0 The buttons O and will move the time slider to the beginning and end respectively The buttons and will slow down and speed up the animation by factors of two The status bar at the bottom of the screen shows information about playback The first section from
94. s completely 3D and allows users to navigate through a model ED Pathfinder A e gt Ep Ss gg SE eer ew File Agents Scene View Debug k a Floor Separation m 0 set Wall Height m 0 Eset gt Liss les las Jl 221 reverse Time 0 14 1 35 Speed 1X Framerate 74 8 fps Figure 81 3D Results for the multi floor stairwell example problem Navigating through a model Once a model is loaded the navigation tools work similarly to those found in the preprocessor The user can rotate the model zoom in and out and roam Roaming works slightly differently than in the preprocessor in that it works more like a first person video game Now the keys w and s move the camera forward and backward and the keys a and d move the camera left and right respectively In addition Space moves the camera up along the Z axis and c moves the camera down Holding Shift while pressing any of the movement keys will increase movement speed Clicking and dragging 68 Pathfinder User Manual the mouse will rotate the camera about its base point The camera position can be reset by pressing Ctrl R Displaying geometry input If a DXF FDS PyroSim or background image file has been imported in a Pathfinder simulation this geometry will be shown by default in the 3D results If not the navigation geometry used by the simulator will be displayed which
95. se feedback helped us improve the software and incorporate more useful features Note on use of THEY as singular pronoun In this document we use THEY as a singular pronoun As stated in the Random House Dictionary of 1987 Long before the use of generic HE was condemned as sexist the pronouns THEY and THEM were used in educated speech and in all but the most formal writing to refer to indefinite pronouns and to singular nouns of general personal reference probably because such nouns are often not felt to be exclusively singular Such use is not a recent development nor is it a mark of ignorance See also the online Oxford dictionary at http oxforddictionaries com words he or she versus they Table of Contents o A E rm er 1 Graphical User Inter Ce een 1 Model Representaci n aen aR E E E AE EEEE toba 3 SIMUIS ON OCS E 4 Limitations and Known ISSUES unse a 4 AMAO I E 4 COMI TUS adas 4 2 Pathfinder E 5 Navigation VIEW eo ER e o o A 5 Sana 2D ISS rica 6 N VI Batine Me D VIEW coat ere 6 NAVI e 2D EW E 7 PRES SUES the VIEW ee 7 O ore E ee ee eier 7 Drawing Ini the 3D and 2D VIEWS ainia ita een 8 View Options ee a a re a seg sane eier 8 Render ODON ee ee prendes 8 MC CUT EVE DIS DV E 9 ale Ee e CN 9 Room Opacity E 9 Model Organization with Groups 9 Creating SUD ErOUDS ee meet es 10 Chance EE 10 3 Creating Movement Space nn anerkennen 11 leie 11 Automaticallv ereating MODOS sia 11 Manually creatine T
96. simulation and resume later between Pathfinder sessions such as if the computer needs to be restarted after installing a system update 64 Pathfinder User Manual To stop a simulation press Cancel during a simulation in the simulation dialog Pathfinder will ask the user if a snapshot should be made Before selecting Yes make note of the simulation time After choosing Yes a snapshot file is written into the same directory as the result with a filename similar to the following untitled_XXXXX XXX snapshot where the X s are replaced with the simulation time at which the simulation was stopped The snapshot file can later be resumed To resume it go to the Simulation menu and select Resume Simulation Then select the snapshot file The simulation will resume from the time it was stopped Note that the Pathfinder file from which the simulation originated does not have to be open to resume a simulation Stuck Occupants Sometimes occupants become stuck preventing a proper simulation run There can be many causes of this problem and we do everything we can to prevent it but it does happen If you are having trouble with stuck occupants consider using the SFPE simulation mode with collision handling disabled This mode uses the simplest set of assumptions and is not very susceptible to the geometric and movement irregularities that can cause occupants to become stuck 65 Pathfinder User Manual 8 Results Summary Report The su
97. splaying agents coloring rooms and setting the transparency of rooms Render Options In the toolbar above the properties window in the 2D and 3D views there are a number of buttons as shown in Figure 5 that control how geometry is rendered OO ae Figure 5 Render options From left to right the buttons are Wireframe Rendering Solid Rendering Show Textures Show Object Outlines Smooth Lighting Display Navigation Geometry and Display Imported Geometry Pathfinder User Manual e Wireframe Rendering displays imported 3D geometry as wireframe only This option is mutually exclusive with the solid rendering option It is useful for drawing doors in the 2D view when 3D geometry has been imported e Solid Rendering displays imported 3D geometry filled in This is selected by default e Show Object Outlines shows the outlines of 3D imported geometry This is similar to showing the wireframe and solid versions at the same time e Smooth Lighting uses a more realistic shading model to show all geometry This may be a little slower to render on older graphics cards e Display Navigation Geometry This toggles the visibility of all the navigation geometry It does not affect anything else including imported geometry and occupants e Display Imported Geometry This toggles the visibility of all imported 3D geometry Occupant Display Occupants can be displayed using a number of options They can be viewed as simple shapes including
98. t When selected the occupant and their path if displayed will turn yellow Multiple occupants can be selected by holding CTRL when clicking them They can be de selected by clicking anywhere else in the model Viewing multi floor problems Some models are composed of several floors causing each floor to obscure the one below it as shown in Figure 83 a Pathfinder provides a variety of options for viewing the model such that the occupants inside can be easily observed One option is to view the model with the floors stacked vertically but separated by a set amount Another option is to view the model with the floors laid out in the XY plane so that they can all be viewed from overhead Both options allow a wall clip height to be specified To use any of the layout options floors must first be defined If the floors were defined in the pre processor they will carry through to the 3D visualization and no additional input is needed If they have not been defined or they need to be modified this can be done by opening the Scene menu and selecting Edit Floors A dialog will appear that shows a list of the Z locations of the floors as shown in Figure 82 From this list floor locations can be added removed and modified Once OK is pressed the 3D results viewer will partition the geometry among the floors such that the bottom floor contains all 69 Pathfinder User Manual geometry from 2 to the next floor s location the top floor contains
99. teering The SFPE mode uses the set of assumptions presented in the SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering and can give answers extremely similar to these hand calculations depending on selected assumptions In SFPE simulations the mechanism that controls simulation movement is the door queue The Steering mode is more dependent on collision avoidance and occupant interaction for the final answer and often gives answers more similar to experimental data than the SFPE mode i e steering mode often reports faster evacuation times Door queues are not explicitly used in Steering mode though they do form naturally The SFPE mode uses a simpler set of assumptions and usually completes much faster than a comparable steering mode simulation in terms of CPU time To select a simulation mode use the Behavior Mode box The SFPE mode supports the following options Add Basic Collisions can be activated to give the simulation a more realistic looking appearance during results visualization This option is disabled by default to more closely match the assumptions in the SFPE mode which allow only room density to affect the speed of occupants as they move toward the exits The effect of this option on the overall evacuation time is usually negligible blocked occupants can usually make it to a door before the door will allow them to pass through Occupants that have not yet started moving t lt delay and occupants traveling to different exits will n
100. thfinder 2009 1 Beta untitled l eo ia Fi 5 em on Results Help y H So asl ab os ug e Wel ag o for faak OOO b nner LERE a TEE Floor Floor 0 0 ft 60e t mna na a HAN A S R E gt 7 a a D D A A 0 o w sd x lo amp a a a a Dev Dev D D Figure 37 Drawing rooms over a background image To draw rooms on top of a background image refer to the section Rooms on page 14 Working with 3D CAD PyroSim and FDS files Because 3D CAD PyroSim and FDS files import 3D data they provide the most helpful information for accurately extracting navigation area Navigation area can be extracted on a room by room basis using the Extract floors tool E from the 3D or 2D views 34 Pathfinder User Manual The tool properties for this tool are shown in Figure 38 The Max Slope refers to the maximum grade that a person can walk on Only imported polygons that have a slope less than this will be included in the result Max Head Height refers to the maximum height of all the agents that will be included in the simulation This parameter is used to subtract overhead obstructions from the resulting room The Gap Tolerance provides some control in dealing with imperfections in the imported data If walls are closer than the gap tolerance Pathfinder will add an extra thin wall in that area helping to split of rooms so the result does not bleed into undesired areas Xx 209 893 m Max Slope 45 0 Y 345 851 m
101. tom profile data only constant values can be used for occupant parameters In addition once a parameter is customized any changes to that parameter in the profile will not affect the customized value X Bounds 0 90 m 1 36 m Priority 0 SO due er Profile Default r ie _ Color PS Advanced SC Y Bounds 39 74m 40 19 m Speed 1 19 m s Visible Behavior Goto Any Exit Z Bounds 0 23 m 0 23 m Mame 02000 3D Model EWom0001 Reset E Size 45 58 qm Figure 44 Using a custom occupant profile Occupants with individually customized parameters can easily be found by right clicking all or a sub set of occupants and selecting Select Customized Occupants from the right click menu if any exist in the selection Behaviors Behaviors in Pathfinder represent a sequence of actions the occupant will take throughout the simulation For every behavior there is an implicit action to move the occupant to an exit This implicit action will always happen last Additional intermediate actions may also be added that can make the occupant wait or travel to a non exit destination such as a room or point By default there is one behavior in the model called Goto Any Exit This behavior simply makes the occupant move from their starting position to any exit present in the model by the fastest route As with profiles any number of occupants can refer to a single behavior Any changes to the behavior will be reflected in
102. unding lines do not form a closed boundary as shown in Figure 40 a the resulting room will spill outside of the lines and form a room around the bounding box of all the lines as shown in Figure 40 b In this case this outer portion of the room can be separated from the inner portion using the Thin Wall tool as discussed in the section Adding thin walls to rooms Once separated the outer portion can be deleted When the extraction tool is finished finding a room the room will lie in the working Z plane of the active floor E E F Eile Edt Model View Simulation Results Help Eile Edit Model View Simulstion Results Help ech CG Hlg Y x sfo D H x ST O kg 1 Floor Floor 0 0 ft 000 Moa 0 232 M r 9 a E P 66e n Mo a a a AR a A E cus rs P F Be REBESHBoa a DH z a amp a Dev D Figure 40 Room extraction results from an imported 2D Floorplan 36 a Pathfinder 2009 1 Beta untitled o gt a Pathfinder User Manual Filling in missing pieces Once rooms have been extracted using the 3D or 2D room extraction tools the model will still be missing doors and stairs Doors and stairs must be added manually as discussed in the appropriate sections of this guide One feature that may be of particular interest to help this process however is the internal door feature of the door tool This feature automatically finds areas within a room that l
103. ways it can be edited with the keyboard to enter precise values or it can be edited graphically e Editing with the keyboard to edit with the keyboard a handle must first be selected Next enter the desired location in the X Y and Z fields in the property panel and select the Commit button The handle will attempt to modify the underlying object using the handle s internal constraints that are described in the appropriate section of this guide for the respective handle s object e Editing graphically a handle does not have to be selected before editing graphically To edit graphically make sure the Select Edit tool is selected and press the left mouse button over the desired handle and drag the handle to the desired location Release the left mouse button and the object will be edited A real time preview of the object being edited will be shown as the mouse is dragged Room handles When rooms are selected a handle can be found at every vertex on the boundary of the room The handles move the underlying vertex to reshape the room The handles can be moved to any location within the plane of the face the vertex is on If the vertex is shared between two faces in non parallel planes the handle can only be moved along the edge to which it is attached Thin door handles When a thin door is selected three handles will be displayed as shown in Figure 70 a The handles on the ends of the door allow the door to be moved along the edge to
104. which it is attached The middle handle allows the door to be made thick by moving the handle to the edge of another room as shown in Figure 70 b a b Figure 70 Door handles 54 Pathfinder User Manual Thick door handles When a thick door is selected six handles will be displayed as shown in Figure 70 b The four handles on the corners of the door allow the door to be moved along the edge to which each handle is attached Each middle handle allows the door to be made into a thin door by dragging to the other middle handle The middle handle can also be useful to reattach the door to a room if the door somehow became detached such as by a modification to the room Stair and Ramp handles When a stair or ramp is selected six handles will be displayed as shown in Figure 71 The four corner handles each allow the stair ramp to be moved along the edge to which the handle is attached The middle handles allow the stair ramp to be reconnected to another room The middle handles can also be useful if the geometry of one room attached to a stair ramp has changed in such a way that the stair ramp is no longer attached to the room The middle handle can be used in this case to reconnect to the room Figure 71 Stair ramp handles Occupant handles When an occupant is selected there is only one handle as shown in Figure 72 The sole purpose of this handle is to move the agent to another location Moving an agent in this manner has a
105. will appear previewing the top or bottom of the stairs Single click to set the point Now move the cursor over the second edge Now a preview of the stairs will appear connecting the first edge to the second Single click on the second edge to create the stairs e Two click with drag Click drag on the first edge to specify both the starting point and width of the stairs Release the mouse and then single click on the second edge to place the stairs 1 3 5m 2 0 0m Stair Width 121 92 cm Tread Rise 117 78 cm 1 1 39308 m 2 0 0m Doori Width STAIR_WIDTH rate Tread Run 27 94 cm A 21 10 0 m NP Door2 Width STAIR_WIDTH Figure 24 Property panel for the two point stair tool 23 Pathfinder User Manual GIES Pathfinder untitled Wa Pe Edt Model Ven Smuaton Boe vyx aao e lacua gex a 0 v SGS BO BO Sa rorta S Poor Fco 0 0m OBRA BH LCE KEE DEL v2 0 0 00m 3 0 m ale wh 121 92 cm Se Wis 121 92 cm Tread Rise 17 78 cm oe 7 e ED Peer With STAIR_WIDTH gege Ni 0 5741 m Er 1 69241 m Door Wie STAIR WIDTH Tresd Run 27 94 cm importes Geometry tresd Run 27 94 on 2 0 0m Doorz Width STAIR_WIDTH F Prones 2i 00m gt 30m Doaz we STAIR_WIDTM De Tread Rise 17 78 on 2 E FEARED ew ss EGoekEoco Figure 25 Drawing stairs with the two point stair tool Stairs extending from one edge Another way to create stairs is to have them ext
106. with the geometry We need to determine why the occupant cannot reach the exit on the right side of the model To do so we right click the room containing the occupant and click Select Connected Components from the right click menu The following dialog is shown Figure 75 Select Connected Components dialog We want to trace model connectivity as far as possible to determine where we might be missing a door or other connection so from the drop down box in the Select Connected Components dialog we choose Entire graph and click OK Pathfinder will highlight the entire graph of components touching the initial selection as shown in Figure 76 58 Pathfinder User Manual mmm Ly Pathfinder 2011 Connectivity pth ee Eile Edit Model View Simulation Results Help c H l g Y x 0 emet roM a MAME a A E Floor Le Floor 0 0m 4 om Name X Bounds 4 00 m 6 00 m Area 23 0 m2 Dia Z Visible Y Bounds 0 00 m 3 50 m Pers 1 5 Profiles W Color L Z Bounds 0 00 m 0 00 m Density 0434783 pers m E e Behaviors Qf Goto Any Exit E a Occupants l Elevators Floors H Floor 0 0 m I BF DERRRESEDO ESA D 5 636 4 88 1 705 m Figure 76 Selecting an entire graph of connected components From the selection we can see that the hallway does not connect to the far right room Upon further inspection we can see that we do not have a door between the hallway and the
107. xits are created in almost the same way as thin doors as discussed in the section Thin Doors The only difference is that the door must lie on an edge of aroom and the edge must not be shared between two rooms Exit doors are displayed the same as thin doors except that they are green as shown in Figure 34 30 Pathfinder User Manual Jog J OBOAD BOBO Sarek ta D E 7GeekkEsco Figure 34 An exit door Importing Files Pathfinder can import a number of image and geometry files to aid in both drawing and automatically extracting rooms This includes several image formats DXF DWG FDS and PyroSim files Importing images Background images can be imported by clicking Add a Background Image on the Model menu When clicked a dialog will appear prompting for an image file The following image formats are currently supported e GIF e JPG e PNG After a file is selected a new dialog will appear as shown in Figure 35 This dialog allows properties of the image to be specified so that the proper scaling rotation and offset can be applied To specify the scaling for the image two points A and B and a distance between them can be specified To specify the rotation of the image an angle can be input that specifies the angle of the vector from A to B with the vector 1 0 0 As shown in the figure the A gt B vector should be 90 degrees from the X axis The image will automatically be rotated when finished Finally a

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