StructuralAnalysisII Starting,StoppingandmonitoringtheMechanicaSolverLecture StartingStoppingandMonitoringtheMechanicaSolver.

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Starting, Stopping, and Monitoring the Mechanica Solver

In this topic you will explore the tools available in Mechanica to find information on the solver report once the analysis has started.
Starting and Stopping the Solver

Start Run o Interactive Diagnostics o Delete Existing Files Stop Run

Monitoring the Solver

Interactive Diagnostics dialog box Run Status summary report o Summary o Log o Checkpoint

The Interactive Diagnostics Dialog Box

A Typical Run Status Dialog Box LectureNotes Starting and Stopping the Solver You can start and stop the solver using options from the Analyses and Design Studies dialog box. They are represented by two icons: Start Run and Stop Run .

Upon starting an analysis (and implicitly, the solver) Mechanica may present you with several prompts:

Do you want to run interactive diagnostics? This option verifies interactively both the pre-processing input as well as the progress of the analysis as seen

from the solver perspective. It is important to understand that these checks dont verify if you specified the correct magnitude for the loads or properly constrained the modelthey simply check to determine whether there are loadsets with loads, materials assigned to the model, constraints in the selected constrained sets, or properly selected surfaces for Contact Regions, and so on. Output files for Analysis Name already exist. They must be removed before starting the design study. Do you want to delete these files? You will see this option prompt only if the analysis Mechanica is about to perform was already run in the same directory. If you choose not to delete the files, Mechanica will stop the new run of the analysis. An affirmative answer will delete the existent analysis folder and the analysis will be rerun.

Upon stopping an analysis (and, the solver) Mechanica will prompt you with a Yes/No option (to make sure that you do want to stop the analysis). If you answer Yes, the solver will stop the analysis. It is important to understand that it is not possible to view results from partially completed, failed, or stopped analyses. Monitoring the Solver Monitoring the Solve is an integrated part of the Mechanica solver workflow. It contains useful information that you might like to know in order to estimate aspects of the analysis such as:

How long did the analysis run for? How much memory did the analysis use? How much disk space did the analysis use?

The answers to these questions can help you to predict the resources necessary for analyses of similar models (with a similar numbers of finite elements, simulation features, and so on). Monitoring the solver can be accomplished through the following different techniques:

The Interactive Diagnostics dialog box, in which Mechanica writes error, warning, and information messages when an analysis is running. The Run Status summary report, in which you can review the Summary, Log, and Checkpoint tabs. From these tabs, you can get a myriad of information pertaining to the current analysis. Some of this information includes run settings, model summary, convergence information, measure values, warning and error messages, memory and disk usage, run completion time and many others.

Best Practices

You cannot use Stop Run to cancel a run you started in a previous Mechanica session, or a run you started directly from the operating system by using the mecbatch or msengine commands.

Review the history of shape change of your model for an Optimization Design Study using the Optimize History menu option. You can use Optimize History to overwrite your Pro/ENGINEER part with the optimized shape developed in Mechanica.
Starting,StoppingandmonitoringtheMechanicaSolverDemonstration

StartingStoppingandMonitoringtheMechanicaSolver_demo.mp4 Starting,StoppingandmonitoringtheMechanicaSolverProcedure

Procedure: Starting, Stopping, and Monitoring the Mechanica Solver

Scenario
Investigate the Mechanica Solver. StartStopSolver lever2.prt

Task 1. Open the Mechanica application and specify Mechanica Solver Run Settings for a Static Analysis.
1. Click Applications > Mechanica. 2. Click Mechanica Analyses/Studies from the main toolbar.

3. Select Initial from the list of Analyses and Design Studies, then click Start Run . 4. When you are prompted Do you want to run interactive diagnostics? click Yes. Answering Yes to the above prompt enables Mechanica to update the diagnostics as the analysis progresses.

5. Click Display Study Status

once the analysis is started.

6. After approximately 10 seconds (or long enough for the solver to have begun the analysis and provided some line items in the Diagnostics dialog box), click Stop Run > Yes to stop the analysis. A good time to stop the analysis is shortly after the solver begins Pass 2.

The simulation Diagnostics are updated as soon as the solver makes it to another major step of calculations. Notice that there are warnings , information , and errors that Mechanica displays interactively. These are called Interactive Diagnostics because you can click on a line item and Mechanica will provide the diagnostics and, if possible, graphically display where the problem is located.

7. Close any open dialog boxes except for the Analyses and Design Studies dialog box.

Task 2. Start the Static Analysis again and use Summary Report to monitor the progress.
1. Verify that the Initial analysis is still selected in the Analyses and Design Studies dialog box and click Start Run to start the design study. 2. Click Yes when you are prompted Do you want to delete the files? 3. When you are prompted Do you want to run interactive diagnostics? click Yes.

4. Click Display Study Status

once the analysis is started.

5. As the analysis runs, select the Summary, Log, and Checkpoints tabs to view the information added to them as the run progresses.

If you need to know if the Mechanica solver is running, you can use your workstation process manager to identify the Mechanica solver executable. For windows machines, press CTRL + ALT + DELETE and click Task Manager. From the resulting dialog box, if necessary select the Processes tab and look for msengine.exe or msengine. If it is not listed, or it is not present, this means that the analysis has either failed or been completed.

6. Close any open dialog boxes.

Task 3. Save the model and erase it from memory.

1. Return to the Standard Pro/ENGINEER mode by clicking Applications > Standard. 2. Click Save from the main toolbar and click OK to save the model. 3. Click File > Erase > Current > Yes to erase the model from memory.

This completes the procedure.