User Guide > Importing Data from Other Applications

The TABLE facility can be used to import data from other applications or from manually created data lists.

Suppose that in our example problem we wish to define a thermal conductivity that varies with temperature (called "Phi" in the example script). We could simply define a temperature-dependent function for the conductivity. But if the dependency is derived from observation, there may be no simple analytic relationship. In this case, we can use a TABLE to describe the dependency.

A table file describing conductivity vs temperature might look like this:

{ Conductivity vs temperature }

Phi 6
1 2 10 22 67 101

Data
0.01 0.02 0.05 0.11 0.26 3.8

Supposing that we have named this file "conductivity.tbl", our script will simply include the following definition:

K = TABLE("conductivity.tbl")

Notice that within the table file, the name Phi is declared as the table coordinate. When FlexPDE reads the table file, this name is compared to the names of defined quantities in the script, and the connection is made between the data in the table and the value of "Phi" at any point in the computation where a value of "K" is required.

If the table file had defined the table coordinate as, say, "Temp", we could still use the table in our example by over-riding the table file definition with a new dependency coordinate:

K = TABLE("conductivity.tbl", Phi)

This statement would cause FlexPDE to ignore the name given in the file itself and associate the table coordinate with the local script value "Phi".

Other forms of TABLE command are available. See the Problem Descriptor Reference chapter "Table Import Definitions" for more information.