The Project Data file can be created with any editor or word processor capable of generating pure ASCII files. Word processors usually insert special formatting codes into their regular document files, such as page breaks, which cannot be read by the SPIRAL program, so special care should be taken when using a word processor to generate a pure ASCII file. The project file also should not contain any blank lines. Once an input file has been created, it can be used repeatedly by the Spiral program.
Each line in the input file is associated with a single data item and contains two fields. The first field is the description or name of the data item. The name of the item is enclosed in square brackets and may not contain any spaces. The second field is then the value of the item to be used. The two fields are separated by one or more space or tab characters. For example:
[data_version] 20002
[project_name] Furniture
[number_of_departments] 10
[department_file_name] Furniture.dep
[building_width] 10.0
[building_depth] 7.0
[number_of_layout_rows] 3
[number_of_layout_cols] 4
[seed]
12345
[tolerance] 0.00010
[time_limit] 120.0
[number_of_iterations] 20
[report_level] 2
[max_shape_ratio]
2.5
[shape_penalty] 500.0
For more information see: