ANSYS at TACC

Last update: June 12, 2024

ANSYS logo ANSYS offers a comprehensive software suite that spans the entire range of physics, providing access to virtually any field of engineering simulation that a design process requires. ANSYS software is used to simulate computer models of structures, electronics, or machine components for analyzing strength, toughness, elasticity, temperature distribution, electromagnetism, fluid flow, and other attributes.

ANSYS is currently installed on TACC's Frontera, Lonestar6 and Stampede3 resources.

Licenses

TACC's current ANSYS license allows TACC users to access ANSYS for non-commercial, academic use. If you would like access to ANSYS, submit a help desk ticket. Include in your ticket your institutional affiliation and a brief statement confirming that you will use ANSYS only for non-commercial, academic purposes. If you are affiliated with the University of Texas, include your academic department in your help desk ticket.

If you have your own ANSYS licenses or would like to install your own copy, you are allowed to do so.

Installations

ANSYS is currently installed under /home1/apps/ANSYS on TACC's Frontera and Stampede3, and /scratch/tacc/apps/ANSYS on TACC's Lonestar6 resources. Installations on Frontera and Stampede3 include the main components: Structures, Fluids, Electronics and LS-Dyna. However, installations on Lonestar6 only include Structures, Fluids and LS-Dyna. Electronics is not included since it is not supported on LS6’s operating system. All packages are installed under the default locations based on the ANSYS naming convention. Table

Table 1. Installations at TACC

Resource ANSYS Version Components Location
Frontera 2023R2 Structures, Fluids, Electronics, LS-Dyna /home1/apps/ANSYS/2023R2/v232
/home1/apps/ANSYS/2023R2/AnsysEM
Stampede3 2024R1 Structures, Fluids, LS-Dyna /home1/apps/ANSYS/2024R1/v241
Lonestar6 2023R2 Structures, Fluids, LS-Dyna /scratch/tacc/apps/ANSYS/2023R2/v232

Running ANSYS

Interactive Mode

ANSYS can be launched with the ANSYS GUI used in interactive mode. Use the TACC Analysis Portal or create a VNC session following the directions in the Remote Desktop Access section.

Caution

Do NOT launch ANSYS, or any other codes, on the login nodes.

ANSYS is managed under Lmod Environmental Module System on TACC resources. Within the VNC session, load the ANSYS module with the following command:

$ module load ansys

You can always get the help information using the module's "help" command:

$ module help ansys

Launch the ANSYS GUI within the VNC session:

$ /home1/apps/ANSYS/2023R2/v232/ansys/bin/launcher232
> ANSYS1
Figure 1. Commands to run Ansys Mechanical Ansys Parametric Design Language (APDL) jobs

Batch Mode

You can also submit your ANSYS job to the batch nodes (compute nodes) on TACC resources. To do so, first make sure that the ANSYS module has been loaded, and then launch your ANSYS programs as shown in the sample Frontera job script below.

#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH -J ansysjob              # job name
#SBATCH -e ansysjob.%j.err       # error file name 
#SBATCH -o ansysjob.%j.out       # output file name 
#SBATCH -N 1                     # request 1 node
#SBATCH -n 56                    # request 56 cores 
#SBATCH -t 01:00:00              # designate max run time 
#SBATCH -A myproject             # charge job to myproject 
#SBATCH -p normal                # designate queue 

module load ansys
# Your-ANSYS-COMMAND-HERE

# Define your working directory
MY_JOB_DIR = /scratch1/01234/joe/Ansys_test

# Run ANSYS Job
"/home1/apps/ANSYS/2023R2/v232/ansys/bin/mapdl" \
        -p ansys -dis -mpi INTELMPI -np 56 -lch    \
        -dir "$MY_JOB_DIR" \
        -j "Ansys_test" -s read -l en-us -b \
        < "$MY_JOB_DIR/Ansys_test_input.txt" > "$MY_JOB_DIR/Ansys_test_output.out"

To obtain the correct Your-ANSYS-COMMAND-HERE, launch the ANSYS GUI used in interactive mode. Here, we use the ANSYS Mechanical APDL as an example. After entering the correct Working directory, Job Name, Input File, Output File, and Number of Processors, you can click Tools and then Display Command Line to get the complete command to run ANSYS jobs in batch mode. No ibrun or mpirun command is needed for running ANSYS jobs.

Other ANSYS binaries, e.g. Aqwa, CFX, Fluent, can be found at /home1/apps/ANSYS/2023R2/v232.

Table 2. Binaries Location

Aqwa: /home1/apps/ANSYS/2023R2/v232/aqwa/bin/linx64
Autodyn: /home1/apps/ANSYS/2023R2/v232/autodyn/bin
CFX: /home1/apps/ANSYS/2023R2/v232/CFX/bin
Electronics: /home1/apps/ANSYS/2023R2/v232/Electronics/Linux64
Fluent: /home1/apps/ANSYS/2023R2/v232/fluent/bin
Icepak: /home1/apps/ANSYS/2023R2/v232/Icepak/bin
LS-Dyna: /home1/apps/ANSYS/2023R2/v232/ansys/bin
Workbench: /home1/apps/ANSYS/2023R2/v232/Framework/bin/Linux64

In the figure below, the small window on top displays the command to run an ANSYS Mechanical job through the command line, which corresponds to the information (i.e., Working directory, Job Name, Input File, Output File) entered on the bottom.

> ANSYS2
Figure 2. Ansys Mechanical Ansys Parametric Design Language (APDL) Product Launcher

Submit the job to the Slurm scheduler in the standard way. Consult each resource's "Running Jobs" section in the respective user guide.

Table 3. User Guides - Running Jobs

Frontera Stampede3 Lonestar6
login1$ sbatch myjobscript login1$ sbatch myjobscript login1$ sbatch myjobscript
Running Jobs on Frontera Running Jobs on Stampede3 Running Jobs on Lonestar6

References