Force Analyst reads data from the result files in the simulation folder. The user must select whether the results should be for a moment in time or a plot shown over the course of time using the tabs at the top of the form. The type of data to be plotted must be selected from the buttons in the upper right of the form, and the time or time-range must be selected in the boxes at the bottom left.
Collections or Series of surfaces should be selected from the tree of check boxes on the left, added to the box on the right using the Add Series button, and plotted. A new session of Microsoft Excel will be opened, data extracted from the result files, placed in columns in a spreadsheet and graphed. Once graphed, the style and formatting of the graph can be changed using Excel functions.
Force Analyst can be used anytime that the forces that particles exerted upon the boundaries are a concern in the project. While the still frame images and videos produced by DEMView can show how and where these forces are most serious, a graph produced by the Force Plotter serves as a visual representation of the data that is hard to extract from the images and videos.