Ansys

module avail ansys/

ANSYS is a general nonlinear multiphysics software offering structural and thermodynamic analysis, continuum flow analysis, analysis of electrostatic and electromagnetic fields and acoustic analysis.

ANSYS can be run either from a module or from a service.

Usage

OnDemand

ANSYS can be run in a browser as an OnDemand service. This is the most straightforward and simplest way.

Kubernetes

Another option is to use Kubernetes service, which offers ANSYS application as a Rancher application.

Module

Although this application can be used in text-only mode, in most use cases, you will need a graphical interface. We recommend to use remote desktop.

Running ANSYS from a module is recommended for advanced users or as a fallback option in case OnDemand and/or Kubernetes service cannot fulfil the user’s requirements.

License

All installed ANSYS versions are available to all MetaCentrum users without location restriction.

Check the number of currently available licenses:

module add ansys
lmutil lmstat -c 1055@lm-brno.ics.muni.cz -a    # list all licences for all software

# filter specific license feature "cfd_base"
lmutil lmstat -c 1055@lm-brno.ics.muni.cz -a | grep cfd_base

Number of available licenses:

Ansys Academic Research CFD (Ansys Fluent + Ansys CFX) in a quantity of 25 parallel runs
Ansys Academic Research Mechanical in quantity of 5 parallel runs
additional tool Ansys HPC in quantity of 512 pieces (=CPU cores)

Basic licences for ansys-cfd and ansys-mechwb include utilisation of four cores (PBS parameter ncpus=4). Fifth and each additional core must be covered by an ansys-anshpc licence in the ratio of one core to one licence. For example, when the calculation requests 16 cores (PBS parameter ncpus=16), 12 licences of ansys-anshpc will be needed for this job.

#PBS -l select=1:ncpus=16...

#PBS -l ansys-cfd=1
#PBS -l ansys-anshpc=12

Available tools

Ansys Academic Multiphysics Campus Solution (25/250)

This academic license includes access to a comprehensive suite of Ansys tools across structural mechanics, fluid dynamics, electromagnetics, optics, materials, and systems simulation.

Domain	Included Tools	Command(s)
Structures & Mechanics	Mechanical (MAPDL), Autodyn, Fatigue Module, Aqwa, LS-DYNA, Forming, Motion, Additive, Discovery	`ansys`, `runwb2`, `autodyn`, `lsdyn`
CFD	Fluent, CFX, FENSAP-ICE, Forte, Polyflow, Chemkin, Rocky, Thermal Desktop	`fluent`, `cfx5launch`, `rocky`, `cfdpost`
Electromagnetics & Electronics	HFSS, Maxwell, SIwave, Icepak, Q3D Extractor, EMC Plus, Charge Plus, RedHawk, PowerArtist	`ansysedt` (Electronics Desktop)
Optics & Photonics	Lumerical (FDTD, MODE, INTERCONNECT, Multiphysics), Zemax OpticStudio, SPEOS	`fdtd-solutions`, `mode-solutions`, `speos`
MBSE / Systems Simulation	SCADE Suite, ModelCenter, Medini Analyse, SCADE Architect/Display/Test	GUI-based / Project-specific launchers
Materials (Granta)	Selector, Advanced Materials (Metals, Polymers, Composites…), EduPack	`granta-selector`, `edupack`
Preprocessing & Interfaces	Meshing, ICEM CFD, Geometry Translators (CATIA, NX, etc.)	`icemcfd`, `meshing`, `geometrytools`
HPC & Parallelisation	HPC Workgroup, LS-DYNA HPC, optiSLang HPC, Rocky HPC	Used internally via solvers

License allows up to 25 simultaneous jobs and 512 HPC cores shared across all supported tools.

Ask the scheduler for a license by adding one of the following options:
> Each simulation consumes 1 solver license (up to 25 for CFD, 5 for Mechanical) and may use multiple HPC licenses depending on the number of CPU cores requested.

-l ansys-cfd=1     # 1 license of Ansys CFD
-l ansys-mechwb=1  # 1 license of Ansys Mechanical Workbench
-l ansys-anshpc=Z  # Z licenses of Ansys HPC

Available ANSYS products

The following Ansys products are available within the MetaCentrum infrastructure:

Ansys CFD - product combining two primary general-purpose fluids simulation products offered by ANSYS - Ansys Fluent and Ansys CFX.

- **Ansys Fluent** contains the broad physical modelling capabilities needed to model flow, turbulence, heat transfer, and reactions for industrial applications.
- **Ansys CFX** is a general-purpose fluid dynamics program for simulating all types of models concerning fluid flow, including effects of temperature(conductance, radiance).

Ansys Mechanical - a product for simulating structural and thermodynamic tasks. The engineering simulation product provides a complete set of element behaviour, material models and equation solvers for a wide range of mechanical design problems.

All ANSYS tools can utilise at most 4 local CPUs for task computation. For more demanding tasks in a grid environment, it’s necessary to use an additional tool – Ansys HPC. Every ANSYS HPC license allows for the distribution of computation to another available (local or remote) processor.

Ansys Fluent

Ansys Fluent supports both interactive and batch use.

Interactive usage

For the graphic environment, open the GUI interface.

For a text-only regime, log in to a frontend and ask for an interactive job in the standard way

ssh skirit.ics.muni.cz
qsub -I -l select=X:ncpus=Y:mem=Zgb  # text-only regime

Start Fluent and proceed according to the onscreen instructions

module add ansys/18.2
fluent # graphic regime
fluent -g # text-only regime

Batch usage

Prepare input data and batch script — in the script, use the following commands:

a) for serial computation:

module add ansys/18.2
fluent <version> -g -i input_file  # serial initialization of Fluent

b) for parallel/distributed computation:

module add ansys/18.2
cpus=`cat $PBS_NODEFILE | wc -l`
fluent <version> -t${cpus} -p -cnf=$PBS_NODEFILE -g < flow.input  # parallel/distributed initialisation of Fluent

Note: you can get a list of available versions by running $ fluent -v.

Submit the batch script:

skirit$ qsub -l select=X:ncpus=Y:mem=Zgb batch_script.sh

Parallel batch usage

It seems that the best usage of parallel fluent differs from HW, where fluent runs (infiniband vs. omnipath), as a rule of thumb, you can use:

  if test $(sort -u < $PBS_NODEFILE |wc -l) -gt 1 -a -w /dev/hfi1_0;then  
          MPI_IMP=-mpi=intel
  fi
  fluent 2ddp -g -t$PBS_RESC_TOTAL_PROCS $MPI_IMP -cnf=$PBS_NODEFILE -i case.jou > case.out 2>&1

To utilise a homogeneous cluster (fluent cannot optimally use nodes with different performance), one should submit via:

qsub -l select=N:…:infiniband=^none -l place=group=cluster …

💡

Tip

To minimise the time needed for communication with the cortex component and increase performance, one can try to increase /solve/set/reporting-interval.

💡

Tip

Check the scalability of parallel run before spawning on dozens of processors, maybe the 16cpu run is faster than the 32cpu one due to the big communication overhead.

Ansys CFX

Interactive usage

For the graphic environment, open the GUI interface.

For a text-only regime, log in to a frontend and ask for an interactive job in the standard way

ssh skirit.ics.muni.cz
qsub -I -l select=X:ncpus=Y:mem=Zgb  # text-only regime

Start CFX and proceed according to the onscreen instructions

cfx5 # graphical mode
cfx5launch # text-only mode

Batch usage

Prepare input data and batch script — in the script, use the following commands:

a) for serial computation:

module add ansys/18.2
cfx5pre -batch inputfile.pre [...]
cfx5solve -def inputfile [...]
cfdpost -batch inputfile.cse [...]

b) for parallel/distributed computation:

module add ansys/18.2

#### Create host list
hl=`sort $PBS_NODEFILE | uniq -c | awk '{print $2"*"$1}' | tr '\n' ',' | sed 's/,$//'`

#### Run the computation, e.g.
cfx5solve -def 0.def -ccl 0.ccl -part-large -start-method "Platform MPI Distributed Parallel" -par-dist $hl

Submit the batch script:

skirit$ qsub -l select=X:ncpus=Y:mem=Zgb batch_script.sh

Ansys Workbench

For the graphic environment, open the GUI interface.

Start Workbench in the graphical mode

runwb2 # graphical mode

Documentation

Software documentation is available locally in the program’s directory:

version Ansys 18.2: /software/ansys-18.2/doc/readme.html
version Ansys 18.0: /software/ansys-18.0/doc/readme.html
version Ansys 17.2: /software/ansys-17.2/doc/readme.html
version Ansys 17.1: /software/ansys-17.1/doc/readme.html
version Ansys 16.2: /software/ansys-16.2/doc/readme.html
version Ansys 16.1: /software/ansys-16.1/doc/readme.html
version Ansys 15: /software/ansys-15/doc/readme.html
version Ansys 14: /software/ansys-14/doc/readme.html

Ansys

Usage

OnDemand

Kubernetes

Module

License

License for parallel use

Available tools

Ansys Academic Multiphysics Campus Solution (25/250)

Available ANSYS products

Ansys Fluent

Ansys CFX

Ansys Workbench

Documentation

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