Dakota Reference Manual: freeform

| Dakota Reference Manual Version 6.15 Explore and Predict with Confidence

- Main Page
- Related Pages

All Pages
freeform

Selects free-form tabular file format for experiment data

## Topics

This keyword is related to the topics:

- file_formats

## Specification

Alias: none

Argument(s): none

Default: annotated format

## Description

A freeform tabular file is whitespace-separated text file with no leading header row and no leading columns. For experiment data files, each row contains data for configuration variables, observatiions, and/or observation errors, depending on context.

Default Behavior

By default, Dakota imports tabular experiment data files in annotated format. Specify `freeform` to instead select this format.

Usage Tips

- Prior to October 2011, calibration and surrogate data files were in free-form format. They now default to `annotated` format, though `freeform` remains an option.

- When importing tabular data, a warning will be generated if a specific number of data are expected, but extra is found and an error generated when there is insufficient data.

## Examples

Import a free-form experimental data file containing raw experiment data in a calibration study

    responses
      ...
      scalar_data_file 'shock_experiment.dat'
        freeform

Example data file with two measured quantities, three experiments:

        18.23       83.21
        34.14       93.24
        22.41       88.92