Technical note | Cards Reference Manual
Abstract
This document describes the use and design of the software tool Cards. Cards is a user interface for structured parameter inputs, and is easily customised to suit a wide variety of software and hardware systems.
Executive Summary
Cards is a user interface and visualisation tool for structured parameter data, such as inputs into scientific simulation software. Cards provides a generic interface that allows data to be defined in a tree structure of parameters, avoiding the need for complex custom input files or user interfaces. It is easily customised to suit a wide variety of software and hardware systems due to its flexible schema design and use of the Python language. It is hoped that by adopting Cards, significant effort and expense can be saved by reducing the need to develop custom GUIs.
Cards provides input checking, and stores a history of runs to aid to the user in simulation data management. Additionally, the concept of common projects is introduced to allow multiple software systems to be executed using a single set of parameter inputs. Plotting functions can be added to Cards easily, and use of the in-built integration with SIMDIS provides visualisation of inputs and outputs from the system.
This document describes the use of Cards and how it may be readily extended to support other systems.