Reference
Troubleshooting
This chapter is organised by symptom: a button that will not run, a message in the corner, a solve that never ends, a number you do not believe. Find yours and work from there.
A button is greyed with a ? and explains itself
An action inWaves cannot perform right now is dimmed but still clickable, and its tooltip ends with why? click here. Clicking raises a guidance message in three parts:
- The reason. The state the scene is in, in one line.
- What is missing. The ingredient the action needs, in your terms.
- A fix. Usually a button that takes you to the step that unblocks it.
Guidance messages and errors are sticky: they stay until you dismiss them. Ordinary confirmations fade after a few seconds. At most four are shown at once. The notification bell at the right end of the status bar keeps every message of the session, newest first, with its time, and shows an unread count for errors raised while its panel was closed.
The gates, and what each one wants
| You were trying to | It says | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Work on a signal (spectrum, FRF, anything measured) | The project has no signals, or No signal is selected | Import a WAV/CSV/UFF measurement, or select a signal in the project tree. The message offers Import Signal…. |
| Compute an FRF from a signal that has one channel | “…” has a single channel | Import a multi-channel recording: an FRF needs an excitation and a response, hammer force plus accelerometer for instance. |
| Act on a part | The project has no geometry, or No geometry is selected | Import STL/OBJ/STEP, or select a part in the tree. The fix button is Import Geometry…. |
| Solve a part that came in as STL or OBJ | “…” holds only a surface mesh | FEM needs a volume (tetrahedral) mesh; an STL is a surface shell. If the part still carries its STEP solid, use Generate Volume Mesh… on the spot; otherwise import the STEP and use STEP → Tet Mesh…. |
| Re-mesh a triangulated import | “…” carries no CAD solid | Re-meshing works from the original STEP surface; a triangulation would only copy the exporter's facets. Import the STEP version. |
| Start the batch volume-mesh action | No part carries a CAD solid | The batch action needs at least one STEP/IGES solid in the project. |
| Start a batch mesh-delete or batch modal run | No part has a volume mesh | Mesh one part first, under Mesh ▸ Generate Volume Mesh…. |
| Solve modes on a scene with nothing solid in it | There is no structure to solve in the scene | Modal analysis wants a part with a volume mesh, or beam/shell members in the scene. A frame model needs no solid part. The fix button is Add Beam…. |
| Place a support, or select nodes | There is no structure to place nodes on | Supports and node selections sit on volume-mesh nodes or on beam/shell nodes. Mesh a part, or draw a beam or shell. |
| Run a scene-wide action on an empty project | The scene is empty | Import a part. This gate is about the scene, not the selection. |
| Run a rigid solve with no transducer placed | The scene has no transducer | The rigid solvers drive every transducer in the scene together. Place one on a node of any part, with an acceleration channel and a direction. |
| Run a rigid solve with no usable signal | There is no acceleration signal that could drive the run | Set the channel's quantity to acceleration or velocity at import. A pressure or voltage channel cannot drive a transducer. |
| Run a rigid solve on a scene built for FEM | This scene is set up for a flexible body | The model already carries FEM modes. Solve it with the flexible-body or motion-to-sound path, or place a transducer if you want the rigid answer anyway. |
| Radiate sound from a flexible body | The scene has no FEM mode set | The radiating part's modes must exist first. The fix button is Solve Modes. Other parts still take part as scatterers. |
| Run a motion simulation | No part in the scene can move | Every part is held: remove a part's support, or add a new part to the scene. FEM modes are not required here; they belong to the acoustic step. |
| Pluck, with modes solved before tensioning | The mode set was solved before pre-tensioning | Pre-tension stiffens the structure, so modes of the bare structure belong to a different object. Solve modes again after tensioning. |
| Open the stabilisation diagram | No FRF has been computed yet | Stabilisation looks for poles on an FRF. The fix button is FRF + Coherence. |
| Build a modal model from the diagram | Stabilisation has not been run, or No poles have been selected | Run Stabilisation first, then click the green (stable) poles in the diagram to choose the mode frequencies. |
| Volume-mesh anything in the browser build | Volume meshing does not run in the browser | Use the desktop build. This is a permanent limit of the web tier, not a missing install. |
| Volume-mesh on the desktop without gmsh | gmsh is not installed | gmsh is separately licensed (GPL) and not bundled. Install it once; inWaves finds it automatically. The fix button is Install gmsh…. |
The app shows an error message
An error you cannot act on is a bug; report it (see the last section). Messages are quoted as the application shows them. Seven embed a value from your project and are still emitted in Turkish in the current build even when the interface is in English; they are marked † and translated here.
| Message | What it means and what to do |
|---|---|
| Unit assignment missing (n channels) † | In the import dialog, give every channel a quantity, a unit and a sensitivity (scale). |
| Transducer channel must be acceleration or velocity † | Re-import the signal with the channel's quantity set to acceleration, or use a recording that has one. |
| This geometry has no volume mesh | The imported STL/OBJ is surface only. Import the STEP solid and mesh it with gmsh; the message offers STEP → Tet Mesh…. |
| This part carries no CAD solid | Re-meshing needs the original STEP. Import the part's STEP version. |
| gmsh could not produce a volume from this geometry | Tetrahedralisation needs a closed solid. Run Surface Health… to see whether the STEP holds only surfaces or the solid has a hole. |
| The CSV has no time column | Either enter the sampling rate by hand, or use a CSV whose first column is time in seconds. |
| No time record (dataset 58) was found in the UFF file | That UFF may hold only geometry. Choose a file that contains measurements. |
| STEP import is not available here | The browser build cannot read STEP. Use the desktop build, or export the model as STL/OBJ. |
| gmsh meshing is not available | STEP → tet meshing runs in the desktop build only. |
| There is no channel → node mapping | Select the geometry, use Assign Node in the properties panel for each channel, then Save. |
| Channels missing from the mapping: […] † | Assign nodes to the listed channels and save the mapping again. |
| Signal in use: sensor '…' is attached to it † | Delete that sensor first (select it and press Del), then delete the signal. |
| Geometry in use: '…' † | Delete the sensors or mode sets attached to the geometry first. |
| An FRF needs at least 2 channels | Import a multi-channel measurement with an excitation (force) channel and a response (acceleration) channel. |
| Invalid direction: '…' † | A direction is normal, x, y, z, or an explicit [x,y,z] vector. |
| The unit is not valid | The unit must match the dimension of the chosen quantity: acceleration in m/s² or g, pressure in Pa or kPa. |
| … is outside the scene boundary † | The image-source method needs the source and the receiver inside the boundary, and the boundary is never resized behind your back. Use Fit the boundary to the scene, or move the object in. |
| No project is open | Start with File ▸ New Project, or open a saved .iwp file. |
| The compute core cannot be reached | On the desktop, restart the application; on the web, reload the page. If it repeats, send the log file named in the last section. |
| An active license is required for this operation | Check the licence state under Settings ▸ License…. See below. |
Licence and startup problems
inWaves validates its licence online every time it starts. The gate that appears when validation fails cannot be dismissed: Esc and clicking the backdrop are ignored. The only ways out are activation or revalidation.
The key field upper-cases what you type and strips spaces as you go.
| The gate says | What to do |
|---|---|
| The key looks invalid | Re-check the key against the one in your portal account. Also shown when the field is empty. |
| The license has expired | Renew from the portal, then Activate again. |
| This license has been revoked. Contact support | Nothing on this machine will fix it. Get in touch. |
| Seat limit reached. Release a machine from the portal | Open Open the license portal, free a seat there, then activate here. |
| A trial has already been used on this machine | Trials are once per machine. Enter a full key. |
| The key is not active on this machine. Activate it again | Enter the key and press Activate; the seat is re-bound to this machine. |
| Cannot reach the license server. Check your internet connection | This is the only code for which the gate offers Retry. |
If the licence server cannot be reached, inWaves does not start. Connectivity is required at every launch and no setting works around it. Once running, the analysis is entirely local and no model data leaves the machine.
Settings ▸ License… is a status window, not the gate: masked key, tier, expiry date, machine ID. It closes normally. Release this machine frees the seat, and the next launch asks for activation again. Do this before rebuilding or handing over a machine, not after.
The application does not start at all. If no window and no licence gate appear, the failure happened before the interface existed. Send the log file (last section). A frozen Windows build has no console, so the log is the only record.
A solve is taking a long time
While a solver runs, a progress dialog shows the phases, the elapsed time and an estimate of the time remaining. Two things:
- The estimate appears only after the first unit of work has finished. Until then it reads calculating….
- Cancelling is cooperative. The stop button asks the solver to finish the unit it is in (one frequency solve, one image source) and stop there. The dialog says a stop request was sent: it will break at the next step boundary. A big frequency step can take a while to land.
A cancelled run produces no partial result: nothing is written to the project and the model is as it was before you started. Restarting repeats the work; there is no resume. If a run is too long to sit through, reduce it (fewer modes, a narrower frequency band, a coarser mesh) rather than cancelling repeatedly.
Meshing fails, or the mesh looks wrong
Three reports answer three different questions:
- Surface Health asks can this thing be volume-meshed at all? It answers The surface is closed: fit for volume meshing, The surface cannot be volume-meshed, or The display shell is closed, but the CAD resists volume meshing as it stands, which is the case for healing.
- Mesh Quality asks are the elements themselves sound? Its verdict line is either The mesh is sound: fit for FEM or The mesh is defective: fix it before solving.
- Mesh Adequacy asks is this mesh able to represent the physics you are asking about? It looks at the thin direction, the elements through the thickness and the largest aspect ratio, and warns Bending adequacy AT RISK: the answer may come out stiffer than it is. A mesh can pass quality and still be inadequate. The warning also sits on the mode set's properties panel.
When tetrahedralisation fails, try the fixes in this order:
- Heal on import. If meshing fails, inWaves offers The volume could not be meshed. Try healing it? and the Heal and Mesh action. OpenCASCADE healing merges small edges and faces, sews loose shells and skips micro-features, so the main body still gets meshed. It handles inward-facing shell normals and features orders of magnitude smaller than the part, such as threads and chamfers.
- Change the element size. A target close to the smallest feature makes gmsh resolve detail that does not matter; too coarse a target cannot close thin walls. Automatic picks the size from the geometry.
- Simplify the part in CAD. Remove threads, small fillets and cosmetic detail before export. Faster than any meshing option.
- Sanity-check with a box. Create Box Part… makes a part that is born with its mesh. If the box solves and your part does not, the problem is the geometry, not the installation.
If healing also fails, the message says so (Healed meshing failed as well.). The geometry needs work in CAD.
The result looks wrong
Before assuming a bug, run the checks the product provides.
- Is the answer mesh-dependent? Convergence Check… solves the model on the current mesh and again one level finer, and reports the difference as a discretisation uncertainty by Richardson extrapolation: Convergence: the worst mode's uncertainty is …%. The answer depends on the mesh, which should be refined. Refine until the uncertainty is small compared with the decision you are making. Three meshes measure the convergence order instead of assuming it. The fine mesh is built in memory only; your project is not changed. Modes are matched in frequency order, so if two close modes swap places between the meshes, that row measures the swap, not the error. Read it with its neighbours.
- Do the rigid-body modes come out right? A model with no supports is solved free-free, and inWaves tells you so: No supports. It will be run free-free (suspended). The first six modes are rigid-body modes (≈0 Hz). If those six are not near zero, or a supported model produces one, the constraints are not doing what you think. The solver cannot detect that for you.
- Is the measured FRF trustworthy at that frequency? FRF + Coherence computes the coherence alongside the FRF. Where coherence dips, the response is not linearly explained by the measured excitation: noise, a missed hit, a nonlinearity, an anti-resonance with no energy in it. A mode identified from a low-coherence band is a pole with no physical meaning, and the stabilisation diagram will not warn you.
The structural solvers are linear. Contact that opens and closes, a joint that slips, a material past yield, a support that lifts: none of these exist in a linear model, and the model will not complain. It returns a perfectly converged answer about a structure that behaves differently from yours. If your measurement shows amplitude-dependent frequencies, or a response that does not scale with the load, that difference is real and mesh refinement will not close it.
Getting help
Help ▸ Send Feedback… reaches the development team directly and works whether or not you have allowed usage data. Choose a category (Bug, Suggestion, Question), describe what happened and what you expected, and add an e-mail address if you want a reply. Without a connection the message is stored and sent when one returns, and you are told which happened.
The checkbox Attach recent error history and system info is on by default and attaches the last 50 notification-bell entries plus the application version, the platform and the GPU name. Nothing else goes: no model, no geometry, no measurement, and never your licence key. A bug report without it is usually not actionable.
The local log file. The desktop build writes to:
%LOCALAPPDATA%\inWaves\logs\inwaves.log
It is initialised before anything else at startup, so it captures failures from before the window appears. It rotates at 1 MB and keeps five older files (inwaves.log.1 … inwaves.log.5), so a crash from an hour ago may already be in a numbered file. Attach the whole folder if in doubt. Uncaught exceptions, including those in background threads, are written there with their tracebacks. The log stays on your machine; nothing is uploaded unless you send it.
When contacting support, include: the version from Help ▸ About; what you were doing and what you expected; the exact message text or a screenshot; whether it reproduces on a fresh project; and the log file. For a wrong result rather than a crash, add the convergence check output.
Messages are quoted as the application shows them in English. For a Turkish interface, see the Turkish edition of this chapter.