INMBatch Quick Start This document describes the steps to quickly begin automating your INM studies. This document assumes you already have INM 6.0, or later, installed and that you have available INM studies that you wish to evaluate. There are some extremely important notes concerning INMBatch and how it interacts with other programs on your computer at the bottom of this page. Please read those notes carefully. Step 1 - Start the INMBatch program by selecting the Start - Programs - AirportTools - INMBatch menu item on your windows based operating system. Step 2 - Press the "New Settings File" button which appears at the far left of the INMBatch program's toolbar. This operation initializes the program and all changes made will be grouped together until either the New Settings File or Open Settings File button is subsequently pressed. Step 3 - Identify the INM executable to INMBatch by pressing the open folder button to the far right of the INM Executable field provided. Browse until you find your INM installation location then choose the INM executable, normally called inm.exe. After choosing the INM executable it should appear in the INM Executable field provided. Notes: INMBatch will only work when provided an executable which is located on a path which has a drive letter referenced at the beginning of the full path. Thus "C:\INM..." is an acceptable format while "AMachine\\INM..." is not an acceptable format. If your copy of INM is located on a networked computer we suggest you map the network drive to a drive letter. Step 4 - Choose an INM study to run in batch mode by pressing on the open folder button to the far right of the INM Study field provided. Browse until you find your INM study. Notes: The INM studies chosen need not be located in the same directory trees, they may even be on differing hard drives. The INM study directories chosen must have a track.dbf file in the directory to be considered a valid INM study by the INMBatch program. Step 5 - Choose the cases to compute by clicking your mouse on the cases shown in the list near the bottom of INMBatch. After clicking on a case a yellow checkmark will appear indicating that the case is to be included in the batch run. Notes: It is okay to turn off an INM Study by toggling the checkbox provided while allowing the cases to remain enabled. When INMBatch runs it simply ignores any INM studies which are toggled off. Thus, subsequently ignoring the study's cases. Step 6 - Repeat steps four and five as often as necessary. Step 7 - Press the "Save Settings File" button to save your work into an "INB" (INMBatch) file. We suggest "my_batch_inm.inb" as a sample name to get you started. The INB file retains the choices you have made during your usage of the tool and will serve as input to the INMBatch subprogram that actually runs your INM studies for you. You may look at it using Notepad but you should not edit the file. Step 8 - Press the "Export Batch Script" button to save a DOS batch script which actually runs your INM studies for you. After pressing the Export Batch Script button you will be asked to supply an INB file. Supply the my_batch_inm.inb file to the program. Next you will be asked to supply a DOS batch script filename. We suggest using "my_batch_inm.bat" as the filename. Step 9 - Open a windows explorer tool, locate your my_batch_inm.bat file and then double-click on it to begin the batch process. After double-clicking your batch file INM should begin to run automatically. IMPORTANT NOTES: DO NOT try to interact with INM while the batch session is being run. If you try to interact with INM during an INMBatch run you will cause the program to fail. Avoid using your computer for other tasks while INMBatch is running a set of INM studies. Even simple tasks, such as reading your email may cause INMBatch to fail. We recommend running INMBatch on a dedicated computer if possible, or running it overnight, or during lunch if possible. INMBatch relies on the precise timing of which windows are open and are the currently selected windows. Do not run extraneous programs which have the capability to open windows on their own during a run of INMBatch. The extraneous program might open a window exactly at the same time that INMBatch thinks an INM window should be open. Under those circumstances, INMBatch may try to operate on the extraneous program and not INM.