How to receive Support for FDS and Smokeview...

You have a two primary options for support, the Discussion Group and the Issue Tracker. Please note that in any of the options below, you should NEVER post any information that is confidential or sensitive in any way. These are public sites and can be read by anyone. If you have a special case that requires some basic level of confidentiality, please email Bryan Klein and explain the situation. Also, if you want some level of anonymity, you can create and use a free Gmail account with a username that does not reveal your identity. This will allow you to post freely and unrestricted by what others might think. We don't care who you are, as long as we can best help you with any difficulties you encounter using FDS or Smokeview.

If you plan to upload a file to illustrate your problem, then please do the following:

• Make the file as simple as possible and still have the problem exist. It is much easier to locate the problem in a 30 line input file vs. a 10,000 line input file.
• If possible, modify the input file so that the problem appears quickly during a computation.
• If the problem is best observed when viewing results in Smokeview, then make use of COLOR to uniquely indicate where the problem is.

Discussion Group

There is a very useful Discussion Group where you can post a question to the community. This is closely monitored by all of the developers and is the best place to get your question answered. Posting here instead of just sending an email to one of the developers, will not only open your question up to all the developers at once, but will allow you to tap into the collective expertise of the entire community.

You will need to subscribe to the Group as a member first on the Group Site.
You can sign up here: http://groups.google.com/group/fds-smv/subscribe
If you are a member of the group, you can also send email directly to the group at:
fds-smv@googlegroups.com All the ease of email, with the added value of a group post.

Please read the following pages before posting, they will help you get the most out of using the Google groups system.

• How to Subscribe to the Group
• Discussion Group 'netiquette'
• How to Post to Google Groups

Issue Tracker

If the issue is something that needs to be tracked by the development team until it is resolved. There is a Google Code, Issue Tracker that will allow a user or developer to create a new issue that can be monitored for progress toward resolution. This can be used for bug reporting, feature requests, etc.

The default view for the Issue Tracker is that only Open Issues are displayed. It may be that someone else has already reported your problem and that it has been resolved and Closed. To determine this you can select All Issues from the drop down box and then click the Search button. This will display a list of all the reported issues regardless of their status. Additionally, one can enter text in the text box, and when the Search button is pressed only those issues with the selected status category (drop down box) that contain the entered text will be displayed.

If you have a reported issue that you wish to check on, then you can select My Issues from the drop down box. Then only issues that were submitted by the login name at the top right of the screen will be displayed.

"FDS Users" E-Mail List

If you would like to be notified of news and information regarding FDS and Smokeview, please register by sending an email to, listproc@nist.gov.
The body of the message should contain the phrase:
subscribe fdsusers Jane Doe
Where you MUST replace the words Jane Doe with your first and last name.
NOTE: The subject line may be left blank.

To unsubscribe from the list send an email to the same address containing the line unsubscribe fdsusers
Past postings of the FDS/Smokeview mailing list can be found in the Listserv Archive.
You cannot reply to the mailing list messages.

Last Resort... Email and Instant Messaging

Email directly to the developers for support should only be used in special cases. It is not the most efficient means of resolving your issue. Bryan Klein is your primary contact for support via email and will redirect your question to the appropriate developer if he cannot help you directly. Bryan is also available by Instant Messaging using a Google Talk compatible IM client and his username of 'bryanwklein@gmail.com'. You will have to add Bryan to your contacts.