Ansys-em

Contents

Summary and Version Information

Package Ansys-em
Description Ansys Electromagnetic Suite: Computer-aided engineering software
Categories Engineering,   Numerical Analysis,   Research
Version Module tag Availability* GPU
Ready		 Notes
19.5 ansys-em/19.5 Non-HPC Glue systems
Deepthought2 HPCC
RedHat6 		N Restrictively Licensed

Notes:
*: Packages labelled as "available" on an HPC cluster means that it can be used on the compute nodes of that cluster. Even software not listed as available on an HPC cluster is generally available on the login nodes of the cluster (assuming it is available for the appropriate OS version; e.g. RedHat Linux 6 for the two Deepthought clusters). This is due to the fact that the compute nodes do not use AFS and so have copies of the AFS software tree, and so we only install packages as requested. Contact us if you need a version listed as not available on one of the clusters.

In general, you need to prepare your Unix environment to be able to use this software. To do this, either:

  • tap TAPFOO
OR
  • module load MODFOO

where TAPFOO and MODFOO are one of the tags in the tap and module columns above, respectively. The tap command will print a short usage text (use -q to supress this, this is needed in startup dot files); you can get a similar text with module help MODFOO. For more information on the tap and module commands.

For packages which are libraries which other codes get built against, see the section on compiling codes for more help.

Tap/module commands listed with a version of current will set up for what we considered the most current stable and tested version of the package installed on the system. The exact version is subject to change with little if any notice, and might be platform dependent. Versions labelled new would represent a newer version of the package which is still being tested by users; if stability is not a primary concern you are encouraged to use it. Those with versions listed as old set up for an older version of the package; you should only use this if the newer versions are causing issues. Old versions may be dropped after a while. Again, the exact versions are subject to change with little if any notice.

In general, you can abbreviate the module tags. If no version is given, the default current version is used. For packages with compiler/MPI/etc dependencies, if a compiler module or MPI library was previously loaded, it will try to load the correct build of the package for those packages. If you specify the compiler/MPI dependency, it will attempt to load the compiler/MPI library for you if needed.

Using the Ansys EDT GUI on the HPC cluster

Although generally it is preferable to do production runs in batch mode, as discussed in the next section, it is sometimes useful to invoke the Ansys EDT GUI. This is particularly useful for setting up/designing the simulation.

Running graphical applications on the HPC cluster so that the display goes back to the workstation you are sitting at can be tricky. The easiest solution is to use the interactive desktop applet in the OnDemand portal. This will start a job on the cluster which presents a full graphical desktop to you through your web browser. You can then open a terminal window, module load ansys-em and invoke the ansysedt to start the GUI. Note that it can take a while (on order of 10 minutes) to start up the first time. Once it starts up, you can design your job and or run it on the compute node assigned to the desktop (as it is a compute node, not a login node, you are allowed to perform computationally intensive tasks.)

Alternatively, you can start the GUI on a login node with display sent back to an X server on your workstation. You need to have an X server running on the workstation where you are sitting (see the section on Graphics for more information). As this runs on the login nodes, you are not allowed to do anything real computations there, and memory will be restricted.

In both cases, it is assumed that you are going directly from the workstation at which you are seated to the OnDemand portal/login node. Going through another layer of remote connection can cause problems.

Submitting batch jobs

For production runs it is generally best to run Ansys EDT in batch mode. This also has the benefit of allowing one to use multiple CPU cores across multiple nodes using the Ansys RSM service. This section assumes you already have an ansys project file (.aedt file), often created from the GUI. You can then submit it with a Slurm/sbatch job submission script similar to this sample script ansys-em_job.sh.

This job script sets the environmental variable PBS_JOBID to the Slurm job id (SLURM_JOBID) and generates an appropriate batch options file. It then proceeds to invoke ansysedt on the MyProject.aedt project file. You will want to adjust the walltime and number of cores/nodes/etc requested, as well as the name of the input .aedt in the script.