Ruby on Rails

I have a ThermalAnalysis class which is NOT a subclass of
ActiveRecord::Base. ThermalAnalysis has a dozen or so sub-classes. I
want to know the best places to put the files, and how to automatically
require all the subclass files.

Currently, I have:

app/models/
thermal_analysis.rb

app/models/thermal_analyses/
subclass1.rb
subclass2.rb
...

First, is it stylistically okay to put thermal_analysis.rb in the models
directory, considering that it's not an ActiveRecord model? (It IS
intimately tied to a few AR models.) If not in models, then where would
you suggest?

Second, what's the best technique for requiring all the ThermalAnalysis
subclasses? I could push a new value onto $LOAD_PATH from within
thermal_analysis.rb, as in:

$LOAD_PATH << File.expand_path("../thermal_analyses", __FILE__)

...but that will only get triggered when ThermalAnalysis is first
referenced, which is usually too late. (FWIW, ThermalAnalysis is
essentially an abstract class: only its subclasses get instantiated.)

TIA.

- ff

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