protoplanet is a simple Python code for quickly making new VPLanet input directories from pre-existing ones. Run protoplanet from a path containing a directory with your input files for a given simulation. A new directory with your specified changes will appear in a new directory. Note that only .in files will be copied/modified. The new simulation you've created can then be run in the usual way, by navigating to this new directory and using the command:
vplanet vpl.in
To clone VPLanet and for more information please see the VPLanet GitHub page.
Suppose you want to copy a VPLanet simulation, hosted in a directory called dir, with modifications to two files, b.in and c.in. You want to set the inclination angle of planet b to 90 degrees, and set the orbital eccentricity of planet c to 0.1. To do this, the appropriate command with protoplanet would be:
./protoplanet -d dir -p b:dInc=90 c:dEcc=0.1
One may alter as many parameters as they want using protoplanet, but beyond a certain point it might actually be quicker to manually copy the directory and alter the input files. For issues regarding units of physical quantities in VPLanet, run the command vplanet -h from the command line to read the documentation.