The tutorial shows a beginning FARSITE user the minimum skills needed to run a FARSITE simulation. It uses the Ashley project to familiarize you with the basic steps to set up and run a simulation. It is presented step-by-step and designed for someone with no FARSITE experience, although it does assume fire behavior skills at the S-490, Fire Behavior Calculations, level. This level of fire behavior knowledge is critical for interpreting the simulation results and knowing what the fire behavior calculations mean.
The tutorial is intended to be used in conjunction with the User Guide as the appropriate topics in each section are cross linked. There are also links to the Reference Guide if the user desires more information on a topic.
FARSITE looks best and is easiest to use on a big screen! Plan on using the largest monitor you can and making your FARSITE window full size unless you are lucky to have a huge monitor.
But this makes it hard to follow along with this online tutorial. The traditional way to solve this is to print out the tutorial. But this online tutorial has hundreds of hyperlinks to let you explore and learn the online help system while you suffer through the tutorial.
Some other suggestions, which may take some extra time to set up are:
BEST - Set up a second monitor so you can have one with the tutorial and the other displaying FARSITE. You'll need Windows 98 or later and a second video card to do this.
BETTER - If you have a large monitor (20") set the resolution to 1600 x 1200 or higher so you can display two windows side by side (or have minimum overlap).
CHEAPEST - Once you have opened the online help, use the Alt + Tab key combination to toggle between your FARSITE window and the online help window.
The tutorial has 12 parts. Each part describes a step or set of steps that, together, allow you to produce a FARSITE simulation. These same steps are needed for nearly all simulations. All input data necessary for this tutorial are provided with your installation. The following are the parts of the tutorial, buttons for each lesson are displayed across the top of this window:
File Structure
Generate Landscape
Project File
ASCII Files
Load a Project
Parameters
Fire Behavior Options
Set Duration
Ignitions
Outputs
Running the Simulation
Viewing Outputs
After completing the tutorial, you will have a general familiarity with the basic steps in fire growth simulation. This will enable you to practice with your own data and start to develop expertise in doing FARSITE simulations and interpreting the outputs.