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Abaqus FEA is a software suite for finite element analysis and computer-aided engineering.

Using your own license

Abaqus is available on Compute Canada clusters, but you must provide your own license. Create in your account a file named $HOME/.licenses/abaqus.lic containing this single line:

File : file.txt

prepend_path("LM_LICENSE_FILE","port@server", ";")

...replacing port@server with the port number and name of your Abaqus license server.

Your license server must be reachable by our compute nodes, so your firewall will need to be configured appropriately. This usually requires our technical team to get in touch with the technical people managing your license software. Please contact our technical support and we will provide a list of IP addresses used by our clusters and obtain the information we need on the port and IP address of your server.

Submission script

Below is an example submission script for a small Abaqus Explicit job running on four cores:

File : file.txt

#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH --time=1-00:00
#SBATCH --mem=2500M
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=4
 
module load abaqus/6.14.1
unset SLURM_GTIDS
export MPI_IC_ORDER='tcp'

abaqus job=Job-SBS-ALU-EXPLICIT-01 input=2018-04-14-SBS-ALUMINUM-EXPLICIT-01.inp memory="2 gb" scratch=$SCRATCH cpus=4 interactive

Abaqus command line options

You can get a list of Abaqus' command line options with abaqus -help. There are a lot of options, so you may wish to pipe the output into a pagination program, e.g.:

[name@gra-vdi4]$ abaqus -help | less

Using the graphical interface

Graham VDI

see Graham#Volta_GPU_nodes_on_Graham Graham VDI Nodes
The gra-vdi machine can be used to run Abaqus interactively with the Sharcnet licenses by any Compute Canada member. Further details regarding how to connect with tigervnc are described below. The license can also be used for running jobs by connecting to dusky.sharcnet.ca. Once connected load the following module:

module load abaqus/2019-sn

If an Abaqus job fails to get a license upon startup, it must be manually killed otherwise it will sit idle on the compute node until its "sqsub -r runtime" limit is reached, and the queue automatically kills it off. One can tell if a job is in an idle state by inspecting the job output file then killing it with the sqkill or scancel commands.

[roberpj@dus241:~/test-abaqus] cat ofile.93249
Abaqus JOB myjob
Abaqus 6.13-3
"standard" license request queued for the License Server.
Total time in queue: 0 seconds.
"standard" license request queued for the License Server.
Total time in queue: 30 seconds.
"standard" license request queued for the License Server.
Total time in queue: 60 seconds.
etc

Running CAE GUI on a viz or VDI workstation

To connect, we recommend installing the tigervnc client on your desktop, as described in https://www.sharcnet.ca/help/index.php/Remote_Graphical_Connections. The best vdi machine at Sharcnet to run Abaqus on interactivly in GUI mode is currently gra-vdi.computecanada.ca. This machine is located at uw therefore the uwo engineering/robarts combined licenses cannot be use. To start Abaqus GUI on gra-vdi do the following:

1) connect to gra-vdi.computecanada.ca with tigervnc
2) module load StdEnv
3) module load abaqus/2019-sn
4) abaqus cae

Previously, Sharcnet recommended using vdi-centos6.user.sharcnet.ca with tigervnc with the following procedure. it is likely this machine will be shut down May1 along with all other sharcnet legacy systems.

1) connect to vdi-centos6.user.sharcnet.ca with tigervnc
2) run the following two commands ...
module load intel/12.1.3 abaqus/6.14.2-sn
abaqus cae

Check license status

Load the Abaqus module and run tne following commands. Note that 1 CAE & 19 standard tokens are reserved for a research group who purchased them and these will always appear in use. To purchase a CAE or standard compute licenses (to ensure access) open a ticket, pro-rated pricing will be explained if during the middle of the license year commencing each mid January.

All features

abaqusstat

CAE feature

[roberpj@vdi-centos6:~] abaqusstat | grep cae  
Users of cae:  (Total of 3 licenses issued;  Total of 1 license in use)
  "cae" v61.8, vendor: ABAQUSLM

Standard feature

[roberpj@vdi-centos6:~] abaqusstat | grep standard
Users of standard:  (Total of 40 licenses issued;  Total of 38 licenses in use)
  "standard" v61.8, vendor: ABAQUSLM

Mapping from tokens to CPUs for Abaqus standard/explicit

CPUS   1   2  4   8  12  16  24  32  64  128
TOKENS 5   6  8  12  14  16  19  21  28   38

Example of token consumption with consecutively run jobs

1) abaqus cae -mesa
Abaqus License Manager checked out the following license(s):
"cae" release 6.11 from license3.sharcnet.ca
<1 out of 2 licenses remain available>.

2) abaqus cae -mesa
Abaqus License Manager checked out the following license(s):
"cae" release 6.11 from license3.sharcnet.ca
<0 out of 2 licenses remain available>.

3) PARALLEL JOB USING 2CPU
sqsub -r 1h --nompirun --mpp=6G -q mpi -n 2 -N 1 -o ofile.%J
abaqus cpus=2 mp_mode=mpi interactive input=heattransfermanifold_cavity.inp job=job_par3
Abaqus/Standard checked out 6 tokens.
<29 out of 35 licenses remain available>.

4) ADDITIONAL PARALLEL JOB USING 4CPU
sqsub -r 1h --nompirun --mpp=6G -q mpi -n 4 -N 1 -o ofile.%J
abaqus cpus=4 mp_mode=mpi interactive input=heattransfermanifold_cavity.inp job=job_par3
Abaqus/Standard checked out 8 tokens.
<21 out of 35 licenses remain available>.

5) SUMMARY
[roberpj@viz10-uwo:~] abaqusstat | grep abaqus
Users of abaqus:  (Total of 35 licenses issued;  Total of 16 licenses in use)
[roberpj@viz10-uwo:~] abaqusstat | grep standard
Users of standard:  (Total of 35 licenses issued;  Total of 16 licenses in use)