Star-CCM+
STAR-CCM+ is a multidisciplinary engineering simulation suite, supporting the modelling of acoustics, fluid dynamics, heat transfer, rheology, multiphase flows, particle flows, solid mechanics, reacting flows, electrochemistry, and electromagnetics. It is developed by Siemens.
License limitations
Compute Canada has the authorization to host STAR-CCM+ binaries on its servers, but does not provide licenses to users. You will need to have your own license in order to use this software.
Configuring your account
In order to configure your account to use your own license server with our Star-CCM+ module, create a license file $HOME/.licenses/starccm.lic with the content :
SERVER IP ANY PORT
USE_SERVER
where you change IP and PORT with the IP address and the port used by the license server.
Cluster batch job submission
Select one of the available modules:
- starccm for the double-precision flavour,
- starccm-mixed for the mixed precision flavour.
Star-CCM+ comes bundled with two different distributions of MPI:
- IBM Platform MPI is the default distribution, but does not work on Cedar's Intel OmniPath network fabric;
- Intel MPI is specified with option -mpi intel.
Neither IBM Platform MPI nor Intel MPI are tightly coupled with our scheduler; you must therefore tell starccm+ which hosts to use by means of a file containing the list of available hosts. To produce this file, we provide the slurm_hl2hl.py script, which will output the list of hosts when called with the option --format STAR-CCM+. This list can then be written to a file and read by Star-CCM+. Also, because these distributions of MPI are not tightly integrated with our scheduler, you should use options --ntasks-per-node=1 and set --cpus-per-task to use all cores as shown in the scripts. As a special case, when submitting jobs with version 14.02.012 or 14.04.013 modules on Cedar, one must add -fabric psm2
to the starccm+ command line (last line in the below Cedar tab of the starccm_job.sh slurm script) for multi-node jobs to run properly otherwise no output will be obtained.
You will also need to set up your job environment to use your license. If you are using CD-adapco's online "pay-on-usage" server, the configuration is rather simple. If you are using an internal license server, please contact us so that we can help you setup the access to it.
Note that at Niagara the compute nodes mount the $HOME filesystem as "read-only". Therefore it is important to define the environment variable $STARCCM_TMP and point it to a location on $SCRATCH, which is unique to the version of StarCCM+. Otherwise StarCCM+ will try to create such a directory in the $HOME and crash in the process.
#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH --account=def-group # Specify some account
#SBATCH --time=00-01:00 # Time limit: dd-hh:mm
#SBATCH --nodes=2 # Specify 1 or more nodes
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=40 # Request all cores per node
#SBATCH --mem=0 # Request all memory per node
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=1 # Do not change this value
module load StdEnv/2020 # Comment this line for older versions than 15.04.010
# module load starccm/14.06.013-R8
# module load starccm-mixed/14.06.013
# module load starccm/15.04.010-R8
module load starccm-mixed/15.04.010
export LM_PROJECT='YOUR CD-ADAPCO PROJECT ID GOES HERE'
export CDLMD_LICENSE_FILE="1999@flex.cd-adapco.com"
export STARCCM_TMP="${SCRATCH}/.starccm-${EBVERSIONSTARCCM}"
mkdir -p "$STARCCM_TMP"
slurm_hl2hl.py --format STAR-CCM+ > machinefile
NCORE=$((SLURM_NTASKS * SLURM_CPUS_PER_TASK))
starccm+ -batch -power -np $NCORE -podkey $LM_PROJECT -licpath $CDLMD_LICENSE_FILE -machinefile $PWD/machinefile $PWD/your-file.sim
#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH --account=def-group # Specify some account
#SBATCH --time=00-01:00 # Time limit: dd-hh:mm
#SBATCH --nodes=2 # Specify 1 or more nodes
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=48 # or 32 for smaller full nodes
#SBATCH --mem=0 # Request all memory per node
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=1 # Do not change this value
module load StdEnv/2020 # Comment this line for older versions than 15.04.010
# module load starccm/14.06.013-R8
# module load starccm-mixed/14.06.013
# module load starccm/15.04.010-R8
module load starccm-mixed/15.04.010
export LM_PROJECT='YOUR CD-ADAPCO PROJECT ID GOES HERE'
export CDLMD_LICENSE_FILE="1999@flex.cd-adapco.com"
export STARCCM_TMP="${SCRATCH}/.starccm-${EBVERSIONSTARCCM}"
mkdir -p "$STARCCM_TMP"
slurm_hl2hl.py --format STAR-CCM+ > machinefile
NCORE=$((SLURM_NTASKS * SLURM_CPUS_PER_TASK))
starccm+ -batch -power -np $NCORE -podkey $LM_PROJECT -licpath $CDLMD_LICENSE_FILE -machinefile $PWD/machinefile $PWD/your-file.sim -mpi intel
#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH --account=def-group # Specify some account
#SBATCH --time=00-01:00 # Time limit: dd-hh:mm
#SBATCH --nodes=2 # Specify 1 or more nodes
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=32 # or 44 Request all cores per node
#SBATCH --mem=0 # Request all memory per node
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=1 # Do not change this value
module load StdEnv/2020 # Comment this line for older versions than 15.04.010
# module load starccm/14.06.013-R8
# module load starccm-mixed/14.06.013
# module load starccm/15.04.010-R8
module load starccm-mixed/15.04.010
export LM_PROJECT='YOUR CD-ADAPCO PROJECT ID GOES HERE'
export CDLMD_LICENSE_FILE="1999@flex.cd-adapco.com"
export STARCCM_TMP="${SCRATCH}/.starccm-${EBVERSIONSTARCCM}"
mkdir -p "$STARCCM_TMP"
slurm_hl2hl.py --format STAR-CCM+ > machinefile-$SLURM_JOB_ID
NCORE=$((SLURM_NTASKS * SLURM_CPUS_PER_TASK))
# Append -fabric psm2 to next line when using module versions 15.04.010 or newer ie)
starccm+ -jvmargs -Xmx4G -jvmargs -Djava.io.tmpdir=$SLURM_TMPDIR -batch -power -np $NCORE -podkey $LM_PROJECT -licpath $CDLMD_LICENSE_FILE -machinefile $PWD/machinefile-$SLURM_JOB_ID $PWD/your-file.sim -mpi intel -fabric psm2
'"`UNIQ--pre-00000020-QINU`"'
Remote visualization
Preparation
o To setup your account for remote visualization:
- Create
~/.licenses/starccm.lic
as described above - Users with a Power-on-demand (POD) license should also:
- set:
export LM_PROJECT='CD-ADAPCO PROJECT ID'
and - add: -power to the other command line options shown below
- set:
Cluster nodes
Connect to a cluster compute node with TigerVNC and open a terminal window. Depending on the version you use:
- STAR-CCM+ 15.04.010 (or newer versions)
module load StdEnv/2020
module load starccm-mixed/16.04.007
**OR**starccm/16.04.007-R8
- starccm+
- STAR-CCM+ 14.06.010, 14.04.013, 14.02.012
module load StdEnv/2016
module load starccm-mixed/14.06.010
**OR**starccm/14.06.010-R8
- starccm+
- STAR-CCM+ 13.06.012 (or older versions)
module load StdEnv/2016
module load starccm-mixed/13.06.012
**OR**starccm/13.06.012-R8
- starccm+ -mesa
VDI nodes
Connect to gra-vdi with TigerVNC and open a terminal window (Applications -> Systems Tools -> Mate Terminal). Depending on the version you use:
- STAR-CCM+ 15.04.010 (or newer versions)
module load CcEnv StdEnv/2020
module load starccm-mixed/16.04.007
**OR**starccm/16.04.007-R8
- starccm+ -clientldpreload /usr/lib64/VirtualGL/libvglfaker.so
- STAR-CCM+ 14.06.013 (this version only)
module load CcEnv StdEnv/2016
module load starccm-mixed/14.06.013
**OR**starccm/14.06.013-R8
- starccm+ -clientldpreload /usr/lib64/VirtualGL/libvglfaker.so
- STAR-CCM+ 13.06.012 (or older versions)
module load CcEnv StdEnv/2016
module load starccm-mixed/13.06.012
**OR**starccm/13.06.012-R8
- starccm+ -mesa