Preliminary Note
This document contains all relevant instructions regarding the Actran software installation. Following this procedure ensures that you will easily have a working installation. Furthermore, this is the most efficient way for the FFT Support Team to help you solving any issue. It is thus strongly advised to strictly follow the guidelines below step by step. However, in some special occasions, the guidelines cannot be followed (specific parallel installation, etc). In these situations, you can contact the FFT Support that will help you to choose the best option.
Supported Platforms
Actran has been compiled and tested for several platforms. Platforms are defined by the processor, the operating system, the runtime environment, etc. A Productline is a set of executables and libraries that correspond to a specific version of Actran for a specific platform.
Refer to the platform definitions document available here to know which platforms are supported. Please contact FFT Support if your environment is not in this list.
Download Actran
The installers related to the different platforms can be downloaded from the MSC Download center (https://mscsoftware.flexnetoperations.com/ )
After downloading the Actran installer, please access to the Installation Section related to your platform by clicking:
Installation on Windows Platforms
To set up Actran, please launch the .exe installer and follow the instructions.
During the first installation of any Actran product, the installer defines the environment variable %ACTRAN_PATH% based on the installation directory. For next installations, the installer will automatically install the productline into the existing ACTRAN_PATH directory. The %ACTRAN_PATH% will be automatically added to the environment variable %PATH%.
Warning
Windows Firewall may block some features of intelmpi pmi_proxy.exe on all public and private networks. If a Windows Security Alert pop-up appears, please press the button Allow access to allow pmi_proxy.exe to communicate on these networks.
Installation on Linux Platforms
To set up Actran, please launch the .run installer and follow the instructions. As an example, the installer related to the platform linux-libc212-x86-64 can be launched in a terminal using the following command:
sh linux-libc212-x86-64_Actran_2023.1.run
Prerequisites Detection
Before launching the installation process, the installer automatically detects prerequisites.
Agreements
You should accept the FFT agreements by typing accept to continue the installation.
ACTRAN_PATH environment variable definition
During the installation of any Actran product, the installer will first detect if the $ACTRAN_PATH environment variable is already set. If it does not exist, the $ACTRAN_PATH must be defined in the .bashrc and/or .profile files. For example:
export ACTRAN_PATH=/opt/fft
The suggested installation patch can be accepted or rejected by typing another installation path.
If not provided, the $ACTRAN_PATH can be specified directly during the installation.
For later installations, the installer will automatically install the productline into the existing $ACTRAN_PATH directory.
Intel MPI
At the end of the installation, an embedded version of Intel MPI ( information ) for parallel computations will be installed. This embedded version can be directly used for parallel computations after proper sourcing of the productline.
Licensing
The MSC licensing tool can be downloaded from the MSC Download center (https://mscsoftware.flexnetoperations.com/ ).
To setup the Actran licensing, execute the installer downloaded and follow the given instructions. Then, to correctly pursue the installation, please refer to the Licensing Document (PDF).
Productline Tree
After the installation, the productline can be seen in the ACTRAN_PATH directory.
First of all, the ACTRAN_PATH directory contains:
- The bin directory which contains the script launched in background by Actran when executing the application.
- The conf directory which contains the configuration file for initialization. This file can be edited by the user.
- The productline directory described below.
The productline directory contains the following:
- The bin directory contains all the executables and shell scripts callable by the user;
- The doc directory contains all the Actran User's guides;
- The etc directory contains the sourcing shell script (backward compatibility with versions prior to Actran 2021);
- The lib directory contains all the required runtime libraries;
- The mpi directory contains the embedded version of Intel MPI;
- The user directory contains user defined data such as the materials library;
- The utils directory contains the odb2act utility;
- All the other subdirectories are used to launch at least one of the previous callable files (executables, shell scripts, Python scripts, etc).
For releases prior to Actran 2021, the productline tree is the following:
- A sourcing shell script which has the name of the productline (actran_2020) and comes with each productline. It is placed at the top level of the tree.
- The only other object at the top level of the tree is the root directory containing the productline itself (Actran_2020). The name of this directory is very important and cannot be modified (see afterwards).
- Inside the root directory of the productline, the bin directory contains all the executables and shell scripts callable by the user;
- Inside the root directory of the productline, the doc directory contains all the Actran User's guides;
- Inside the root directory of the productline, the lib directory contains all the required runtime libraries;
- Inside the root directory of the productline, the mpi directory contains the embedded version of Intel MPI;
- Inside the root directory of the productline, the user directory contains user defined data such as the materials library;
- Inside the root directory of the productline, the utils directory contains the odb2act utility;
- All the other subdirectories are used to launch at least one of the previous callable files (executables, shell scripts, Python scripts, etc).