Ansys Workbench Products
Alysa Guillama
Set the following environment variables based on the behavior you want. Set the environment variables following the conventions of your operating system. Not all of these are required for all integrated Ansys Workbench products (such as Ansys Autodyn), but setting them correctly for Ansys Workbench will in no way hinder the performance of the other products.
The ANSYS242_DIR environment variable sets the location of the Ansys directory hierarchy. The default value is c:\Program Files\ANSYS Inc\V242\ANSYS. You probably will not need to reset this variable, unless you change the location of the installed files.
ANSYS242_PRODUCT - set this to the correct product variable to run Mechanical APDL to start with the correct Mechanical APDL product without specifying the -p command modifier each time.
ANS_CONSEC - set this to YES to disable Mechanical APDL dialog boxes and allow multiple jobs to run consecutively without waiting for user input. Settings for ANS_CONSEC are:
LSTC_LICENSE - This is an LS-DYNA environment variable that controls which license manager is used by the LS-DYNA executable. It is set to Ansys during installation; changing this environment variable will prevent Ansys LS-DYNA from using your Ansys licenses when running the executable.
Installing MPI for Ansys Parallel Processing gives instructions for installing MPI software, for use with Ansys Parallel Processing. This section mentions the following set-password batch scripts, for caching your login/password credentials:
If, when running any of your simulations, you get an error message relating to an inability to connect to the hydra_service, you will need to run the corresponding set-password script. Note that because some Ansys products require processing in parallel, it may be necessary to run the set-password script even if you are not performing parallel processing.
The default Intel MPI in Fluent release 2023 R2 fails to install the hydra service when installing Intel MPI from the Ansys Installation Launcher on Windows. Workaround: You must make sure that the appropriate services have been configured to run by the administrator as follows:
If you are running ICEM CFD over the network, you may not be able to access ICEM CFD Help using the Help menu. To access ICEM CFD Help, navigate to commonfiles\help\en-us in the installation directory on the server machine and copy the file icemcfd_help.chm to your local machine. Double-click the local copy to view the help.
While in Ansys Workbench, install the plug-in using the Extensions > Install Extension menu. You can then set it to load automatically at startup in the Extensions > Manage Extensions menu.
Legacy license keys from prior to Ansys R2024 R2 use the NTI FLEXLm license system. The option for NTI licensing must then be enabled in the licensing.txt file /ansys_inc/v242/fensapice/config/licensing.txt or by setting up the NTI_LICENSE_FILE environment variable.
This section gives information about .bat file commands and provides batch files examples. Batch (.bat) files are plain text files. They contain a series of commands that are executed by the Windows command-line interpreter.
On the server, in the custom_dirs.dat file (that may be located in the NX installation on the server), add the path to the NX_SPEOS_XXXX folder. The following example orders NX to launch Speos for NX as add-on when launching NX.
On the server, share the folders where NX (example: \\yourseverpath\Siemens\NXXXXX) and Speos for NX (example: \\yourserverpath\Ansys Inc\v2XX) are installed, in order for your local machine to access the files.
I have installed ANSYS for students 19.2. I can run workbench but when I try to enter the DesignModeler to create geometry it fails and says "The geometry editor was closed abnormally". I have seen several other threads discussing a similar issue, and I have uninstalled, reinstalled, changed file names, etc. as suggested. When I run the Product and CAD Configuration Manager and select Configure Products and CADs, no products are displayed at all, which makes me think there is something wrong with the installation.
I have updated the drivers and rebooted. The same issue still exists. It seems like it must be to do with the way it is installed. Nothing is shown in the Product and Cad Configuration as if it doesn't recognise that I have the different applications?
The installation window says "Installation Complete. Please review the above information." Can I click Exit now or will it close automatically? That may be a stupid question but I'm getting very frustrated so want to make sure everything is done correctly.
These symptoms are most likely to occur if Windows Defender is installed and running. There have been reports that Microsoft Windows Defender removes the localhost setting from the C:Windowssystem32driversetchosts file. See the instructions in FAQ Question 5"
Interestingly workbench does appear when i type workbench in the windows search bar when acting as the new user. When i search from my main user it does not. It doesn't look like anything is working. Thanks very much for your time, Jake.
I do still have the issue with the blank product config with the new user. I have just tried the manual registration thing. A couple of error dialogue boxes came up but it did seem to say some or all were successful.
The need to run from the command line has not changed since we originally published this post in 2012. And most of the options are the same. Some things are simpler, there are some new command line options, and there are a lot more products in the Ansys family. In this post, we will cover the basics for launching from the command line for the flagship products and also share where you can learn more in the Ansys documentation.
One of the big changes over the past years is the use of Python or 3rd party programs to run Ansys solvers for you. Maybe you are doing a multi-tool optimization or a digital twin. Or maybe you created a vertical application that runs Ansys solvers in the background. In such cases, you will be launching the executables from your program or script, and the path and the options are critical for this.
When you execute a program on Windows or Linux, you have to tell the operating system where the executable is that you want to run. This is called the path. As an example, Ansys MAPDL is located here for 2022R1:
If things are not working, it could be because of paths. Most of that has been fixed in recent versions of Ansys, but it could be a problem. Scroll down to the section on paths in the original articles to learn details on what this means and how to do it. That has not changed since 2012 (actually, its been the same since 2002 or so). In most cases, just use the full path to run the program, as in the examples below.
There are 37 total command line options for Ansys Mechanical APDL as of Ansys 2022R2. They control parallel processing, which licenses to call, GPU usage, custom executables of the solver, and a few other things you may want to control. To see the full list and get details on every option, go help in:
The Ansys Workbench is fundamentally a program written to use a graphical interface. You can launch it from the command line, have it run commands, and then exit. You can launch a huge array of Ansys products from Ansys Workbench and control them with python commands.
But even in batch mode it is a text-only batch program. Once launched, you can type commands into the command console or use Python scripts to control things. Truthfully, running Ansys Workbench and all the programs it controls is really about scripting and not running from the command line.
Being an older program, and being a CFD tool, Ansys Fluent is much more like Ansys Mechanical APDL when it comes to being run from the command line. You can launch the graphical user interface, GUI, or run in text-only mode.
LS-Dyna is a batch solver. Although there are a variety of pre- and post-processors around that work with the solver, most people use Ansys Workbench these days. Workbench will build a command string and then run the solver. If you want to execute your own solves, especially if you modify the input file (filename.k) they provide a handy utility called LS-Run.
Sometimes you just get tired of clicking on icons. Sometimes you just need to feel the control and power of launching your applications from the command line. You type it in, you hit the enter key, and sometimes you can actually hear the disk spin up or the fan run faster to cool the processor as the program you asked for, the program you took time to type out, leaps to life in front of you. Satisfaction.
The first and most important concept is to be aware of the path. This is where most errors happen. One of the big changes over the years is that as software gets more complicated, the executable program or script that you use to launch a solver is now buried deep down inside a directory structure. Since we never run in that actual directory we need to tell the operating system where the executable is. You can do this by including the full directory path in your command line argument, or by adding it to your path.
On Windows it is not documented, the assumption being that you will be clicking on icons and not typing into a command window. So a little detective work is needed. Use a file explorer and the Linux documentation on launching to locate the executable for solvers you want to use:
The /ansys_inc part is usually replaced with c:\Program Files\ANSYS Inc. The rest of the path is pretty much the same, swapping forward slashes with backward slashes. Use these paths in your command line or add to your path by:
Important note for Windows: If you are typing the path in on the command line, you need to put it in double quotes. The convention on Windows is to specify directories with spaces in the name. But the convention is not to have a command line parser that recognizes this. So you will get an error if you type:
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