SCALE-help FAQ
Q: Who is the SCALE Team?
A: The SCALE Team is defined as ORNL staff that are performing SCALE development and applications activities under the coordination of the SCALE Director and in compliance with the SCALE quality assurance (QA) program.
Q: What is the scope of the SCALE help team?
A: The SCALE help team was designed to support SCALE users in addressing challenges they may encounter while building, installing, and running SCALE. This includes addressing code errors and unexpected results when applying SCALE. The SCALE code system benefits enormously from users’ feedback! Unfortunately, currently the SCALE team does not have funding to help users with model design. For questions that are related to how to get a user license for the SCALE releases distributed by RSICC, the users are recommended to directly contact RSICC.
Q: I ran into an issue when running SCALE. How do I get help?
A: Confirm your input is error-free by opening it with Fulcrum and checking the Validation window. Then
- Check if a similar issue was already addressed in the SCALE Forum
- Contact scalehelp while following the guidelines under “What should I include in my SCALE-help request”
- Note that the SCALE manual, as well as the regression and samples folder under your SCALE install, contain many SCALE input examples that might be helpful.
Q: What should I include in my SCALE-help request to scalehelp?
A: To expedite the response to your inquiry, please select a relevant subject line for your message (e.g., “unexpected error message for decay heat calculation with ORIGAMI”) and include in your email the following information, as applicable:
- Your full name and affiliation, which are consistent with your SCALE license
- Category (e.g., code application, SCALE documentation, SCALE installation, SCALE update, Fulcrum, SCALE training, or miscellaneous)
- SCALE version (e.g., 6.3.1, 6.2.4, etc.)
- Code/sequence name (AMPX, CSAS, KENO-VI, Polaris, TRITON, etc.)
- Description of unexpected behavior
- Description of expected behavior
- Description of your attempt to fix the errant behavior. If you are using SCALE 6.3 or 6.2, we encourage you to perform an input error check in Fulcrum.
- Relevant (non-proprietary) example: input and output files
- Computer platform and OS version (e.g., Windows 10, Linux RHEL 9, Mac OS X 12.6)
- Compiler and third-party library versions (Intel, Lapack, Qt, MPI, CMake, etc.) if attempting to compile SCALE from source code
Q: I have a license for SCALE 6.2.x, How do I upgrade to SCALE 6.3.x?
A: You need a new license. Please contact RSICC.
Q: I have a SCALE 6.2.x license and want to upgrade to 6.2.x+. Do I need a new license?
A: At the time of this writing, our understanding is that you do not need a new license. Email us at scalehelp to begin the process.
Q: I got a new laptop and want to move SCALE from the old to the new computer. Do I need a new license?
A: At the time of this writing, our understanding is that this action is fine if you are following the rules of the single-user license that you received from RSICC. We also note that you must ask RSICC for the most up-to-date guidance.
Q: I upgraded from SCALE 6.2.3 to SCALE 6.2.4 and now SCALE can’t find the data directory. How do I properly link to the data?
A: Installing and Building SCALE highlights the preferred method for linking the previous installation of SCALE data into a new version. This is done on Linux by using the data directory from the SCALE 6.2.3 install with SCALE 6.2.4 via a soft link command:
```
cd /software/scale-6.2.4
ln -s /software/scale-6.2.3/data data
````
Equivalent commands are documented in the manual for Windows and MacOs.
Q: Where can I find information / installation files for various SCALE releases?
A: The SCALE releases page contains information on official SCALE releases (beta versions and production versions)
Q: Is SCALE NQA-1?
A: Since SCALE 6.2, the SCALE QA plan has been written to be NQA-1 compatible, meaning that it covers the topics one would expect in an NQA-1 certified plan. However, SCALE does not intend to acquire an official NQA-1 certification. External entities (companies, users) have no contract or agreement with the SCALE Team that would give them the right to audit the QA program and the development process. The ORNL QA departments may perform an internal audit, as they would for any software or activity within ORNL. Sponsors of SCALE development are also able to request an audit. For any user of SCALE, it is recommended to perform a commercial grade dedication (CGD). We, the SCALE Team, will furnish any non-sensitive records or documents to assist with a CGD, per request.
Q: Where is SCALE's Test Suite Documented? (updated 2023-03-01)
A: A set of problems is included in the SCALE distribution and consists of feature samples and feature regression inputs. These are located in SCALE/samples/input and SCALE/regression/input, respectively. These problems are intended to demonstrated features and fixes to previously regressed features and should be self-documented via embedded comments. Any questions regarding these can be sent to scalehelp.