Using Abaqus on the HPC System

To use ABAQUS on the HPC, you will need the following:

• Access to the HPC system (Contact HPC support if you need an account created).
• A connection to the HPC System, see Connecting to the HPC Cluster for information on how to do this.
• If you plan on using abaqus cae on the HPC system, you will require a graphical interface to the HPC system.  See Graphical Connection to the HPC System for information on how to do this.

Abaqus Documentation

For those who are new to using Abaqus, it is suggested to have a look at “Getting Started with Abaqus: Interactive Edition”.  To have a look at this document using a browser within the HPC system, issue the following command (you must execute this command within the VNC environment on a terminal session):

firefox /apps/software/abaqus/6.13/Documentation/docs/v6.13/books/gsa/book01.html

If you like, you might consider copying the Abaqus documentation to your “home directory” so that you can “transfer” the PDF documents to your local machine to view.  This can be done by executing the following commands (within a terminal session ? either inside a VNC session or from a SSH connected session like putty):

cd~

mkdir abaqus-docs

cd abaqus-docs

cp /apps/software/abaqus/6.13/Documentation/docs/v6.13/pdf_books/*.pdf .

If using a windows system, open your “mapped HPC drive” on your local computer, and then the newly created “abaqus-docs” folder.  Simply move these files to your local system.

Using the Abaqus CAE

For those who already have a HPC account, using a “graphical” connection, you should be able to start ABAQUS issuing the command (within the directory you wish to stored your abaqus files):

abaqus cae -mesa

The “-mesa” flag option disables graphics hardware acceleration to resolve graphics incompatibility.

Note that we only have 4 licenses for the CAE system.  So please close the application down when finished.

Solving a Abaqus job

To “solve” an Abaqus job on the HPC system, simply issue the following command:

abaqus job=<your abaqus input file>

This will submit a “HPC Job” to the system requesting the default resources (CPU’s = 1, Memory = 4gb).  If you wish to change the requested resources, simply issue the following command:

abaqus cpus=<value> memory=<memory value> job=<your abaqus input file>

As an example submission

abaqus cpus=4 memory=20 job=boltpipeflange_axi_solidgask

The above example would use 4CPU’s, 20GB of Memory and solve the boltpipeflange_axi_solidgask job.

Once you job has completed, you can use the CAE application to complete the “post”  processing process.