Option Argument Description Available on
-acf N/A Option to specify that the input file is an ACF file for a multi-body dynamics solution sequence.
All Platforms
-amls YES/NO Invokes the external AMLS eigenvalue solver.
The AMLS_EXE environment variable needs to point to the AMLS executable for this setting to work.
Overrides the PARAM, AMLS setting in the input file.
(Example: optistruct infile.fem –amls yes)
Linux
-amlsncpu 1, 2, or 4 Defines the number of CPUs to be used by the external AMLS eigenvalue solver. This
parameter will set the environment variable OMP_NUM_THREADS.
The default value is the current value of OMP_NUM_THREADS. Note that this value can be set by the command line arguments – nproc or –ncpu.
OptiStruct and AMLS can be run with different allocations of processors. For example, OptiStruct can be run with 1 processor and AMLS with 4 processors in the same run.
Only valid with –amls run option or when PARAM, AMLS is set to YES.
Overrides the PARAM, AMLSNCPU setting in the input file.
Default: Number of processors used by OptiStruct.
(Example: optistruct infile.fem –amls yes –amlsncpu 4)
Linux
-amlsmem Memory in GB
<Real>
Defines the amount of memory in Gigabytes to be used by the external AMLS eigenvalue solver. This run option is only supported for AMLS versions 5 and later.
Note:
Linux
Option Argument Description Available on
Option Argument Description Available on (yes) is
assigned. printed for all of the elements violating the error or warning limits.
Default is YES.
(Example: optistruct infile.fem –checkel full)
(Example: optistruct infile.fem –checkel)
Note: An argument for –checkel is optional.
If an argument is not specified, the default argument (yes) is assigned.
-compress N/A Submits a compression run.
Reduces out matching material and property definitions.
Property definitions referencing deleted material definitions are updated with the retained matching material definition
(reduction of property definition occurs after this process).
Element definitions referencing deleted property definitions are updated with the retained matching property definition. The resulting bulk data file will be written to a file named <filename>.echo.
It is assumed that there is no optimization, nonlinear or thermal-material data in the bulk data. If such data are present in the input file, the resulting file (<filename>.echo) may not be valid.
The –compress run option cannot be used in combination with any other option as
OptiStruct terminates the run after the .echo file is generated.
(Example: optistruct infile.fem – compress)
See OptiStruct Compression Run for more information.
All Platforms
-core in, out,
min in – in-core solution is forced out – out-of-core solution is forced
All Platforms
Option Argument Description Available on
Option Argument Description Available on environment variable should point to the
FastFRS executable for this setting to work.
Overrides the PARAM, FFRS setting in the input file.
(Example: optistruct infile.fem –ffrs yes)
-ffrsncpu 1, 2, or 4 Defines the number of CPUs to be used by the external FastFRS eigenvalue solver. This parameter will set the environment variable OMP_NUM_THREADS.
The default value is the current value of OMP_NUM_THREADS. Note that this value can be set by the command line arguments – nproc or –ncpu.
OptiStruct and FastFRS can be run with different allocations of processors. For example, OptiStruct can be run with 1 processor and FastFRS with 4 processors in the same run.
Valid only when the –ffrs run option or PARAM, FFRS is set to YES.
Overrides the PARAM, FFRSNCPU setting in the input file.
Default: Number of processors used by OptiStruct.
(Example: optistruct infile.fem –ffrs yes –ffrsncpu 4)
Linux
-ffrsmem Memory in GB
<Real>
Defines the amount of memory in Gigabytes to be used by the external FastFRS
eigenvalue solver. This run option is only supported for FastFRS versions 2 and later.
Note:
1. This run option will override the memory value set by PARAM, FFRSMEM in the input file and the environment variable
FFRS_MEM.
2. This run option is valid only when the – ffrs run option or PARAM, FFRS is set to YES.
Linux
Option Argument Description Available on -fixlen RAM in
MBytes Disables dynamic memory allocation.
OptiStruct will allocate the given amount of memory and use it throughout the run. If this memory is not available, or if the allocated amount is not sufficient for the solution process, OptiStruct will terminate with an error.
To avoid over specifying the memory when using this option, it is suggested first to run OptiStruct with the -check option and use the results of that run to properly define the memory size for the -fixlen option.
This option allows, on certain platforms, to avoid memory fragmentation and allocate more memory than is possible with dynamic memory allocation.
Overwritten by -len and -core options.
(Example: optistruct infile.fem -fixlen 500)
All Platforms
-gpu N/A Activates GPU Computing All Platforms
-gpuid N/A N: Integer, Optional, Selects the GPU Card.
Default = 1.
All Platforms
-h N/A Displays script usage. All Platforms
-len RAM in
MBytes Preferred upper bound on dynamic memory allocation.
When different algorithms can be chosen, the solver will try to use the fastest algorithm which can run within the specified amount of memory. If no such algorithm is available, then the algorithm with minimum memory requirement will be used. For example, the sparse linear solver, which can run in-core, out-of-core or min-core will be selected. The – core option will override the –len option. The default for –len is 1000MB, this means that all except for very small models, OptiStruct will use only the minimum memory needed to run the job. If –len value is larger than the amount of available physical RAM, it may cause excessive swapping during
All Platforms
Option Argument Description Available on computations, and significantly slow down the
solution process.
Default = 1000 MB.
(Example: optistruct infile.fem –len 32)
Best practices for –len specification:
For proper memory allocation while using – len in an OptiStruct run, avoid using the exact reported memory estimate value (for eg. Using Check). The –len value should be provided based on the actual memory of the system. This would be the recommended memory limit to run the job, it may not necessarily represent the memory utilized by the job or the actual memory limit. This way, the job is more likely to run with the best possible performance. If the same system is shared by multiple jobs, then the memory allocation should follow the same procedure as above; except, that the individual
maximum memory should be used in place of the total system memory. (If a job runs out-of-core instead of in-core (it exceeded the memory allocation) it will still run very efficiently. However, make sure that the job does not exceed the actual memory of the system itself as this will slow the run down by a large factor. The recommended method to deal with this is to specify –maxlen as the actual memory of the system to limit the maximum memory that can be used on the system.
-lic FEA, OPT FEA - FE analysis only
(OptiStructFEA).
All Platforms
OPT - Optimization (OptiStruct or OptiStructMulti).
The solver checks out a license of the
specified type before reading the input data.
Once the input data is read, the solver verifies that the requested license is of the correct type. If this is not the case,
OptiStruct will terminate with an error.
Option Argument Description Available on
Option Argument Description Available on
Option Argument Description Available on
Option Argument Description Available on
Option Argument Description Available on
Option Argument Description Available on
Option Argument Description Available on
set safely to a very large value.
-version N/A Checks version and build time information from OptiStruct.
All Platforms
-xml N/A Option to specify that the input file is an XML file for a multi-body dynamics solution
sequence.
All Platforms
Comments
1. Any arguments containing spaces or special characters must be quoted in {} , for example: -mpipath {C:\Program Files\MPI}. File paths on Windows may use
backward "\" or forward slash "/" but must be within quotes when using a backslash "\".
2. Currently, the solver executable (OptiStruct) does not have a specific limit on the number of processors/cores assigned to the SMP part of the run ( -nt/-nthread ). However, practical tests indicate that there is little advantage in increasing this value beyond 4, and if the value for this option is set too high, it may actually increase the run time. Therefore the solver script is programmed to error out if the value of -nt exceeds 16. Users
interested in testing this limitation may edit the hwsolver.tcl script (text file) located at:
{ALTAIR_HOME}/hwsolvers/scripts/
To do so, increase '16' in the following lines:
add_arg nthread "-nproc=" range { 1 16 } (Or)
add_arg nthread "-nt=" range { 1 16 }
This line appears several times in the script, each appearance is clearly commented to indicate the specific solver executable it applies to.
3. The above arguments are processed by solver script(s) and not by the actual executable.
If you are developing internal scripts which use the executable directly, then you may get specific information about command line arguments that are accepted by the executable by looking at the content of the .stat file, where these arguments are listed for each run, or you can contact [email protected] for more information.
4. The order of the above options is arbitrary. However, options for which arguments are optional should not be followed immediately by the INPUT_FILE_NAME argument.