Before the Engineering Vibration Toolbox for Octave can be installed, Octave, from http://www.octave.org must be installed. Please consult that website for installation instructions.
The toolbox can go in any directory as long as the Octave path to it is set properly in the .octaverc file in the user’s home directory. Like any of the other toolboxes, you should not save personal files inside the ovtoolbox directory since you may inadvertently lose them when you update (i.e. you may decide to delete the directory and replace everything).
Example: On my mac (which is BSD unix), my .octaverc file contains the command: path(path,”/Volumes/LaCie/Documents/MyMath/ovtoolbox”);
Typing ’help vtb?’ will provide a table of contents for the files related to chapter ’?’. Typing ’help codename’ will provide help on the particular code. Note that the ’filename’ is ’codename.m’.
Engineering Vibration Toolbox commands can be run by typing them with the necessary arguments just as any other Octave/MATLAB commands/functions. For instance, vtb1_1 can be run by typing ”vtb1_1(1,.1,1,1,0,10)”. Many functions have multiple forms of input. The help for each function shows this flexibility.
To print a plot, the easiest way may be to type “print” from the Octave console. This should bring up dialog boxes that enable you to send the current plot to your current Windows printer.
The “print” command can also be used to generate graphics files for embedding into your
favorite word processing program. Type “help print” for details. By default the file will end up in
the directory
C:\Program Files\GNU Octave #\octave_files
Support for the Engineering Vibration Toolbox has come from a number of sources. First and foremost, Daniel J. Inman, who initially tasked myself and Donald J. Leo to write version 3 of the software for his text ”Engineering Vibration” by Dr. Daniel J. Inman (Prentice Hall, 1994). I also thank the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Wright State University for providing the computer resources for developing the MATLAB 4 version of the software. Perhaps the people who have given the most are my students who painfully experienced every piece of beta code, often at the least opportune times. Thanks is also given to Dr. Maurice Petyt and Robert C. Chiroux for their patience in testing numerous 4.0 beta versions of this software. Finally, John W. Eaton and others for writing/coordinating/ developing/supporting Octave. Please see http://www.octave.org for more information on Octave and how you can support its development.
The Engineering Vibration Toolbox for Octave is licensed free of charge for use with Octave. For professional use with Matlab, users should contact the Engineering Vibration Toolbox author directly.
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MATLAB is a registered trademark of the MathWorks, Inc. Mac(intosh) is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. PostScript is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp. Unix is a registered trademark of AT&T.
Joseph C. Slater is the copyright holder of the Engineering Vibration Toolbox. Neither the author, Prentice Hall, nor Wright State University make any warranty with regard to merchantability or fitness for any given purpose with regard to the software. All rights are retained. No permission is given to anyone other than myself, the MathWorks and Prentice Hall to distribute this software in any manner whatsoever.