ANSYS Icepak Batch Tutorials

This tutorial will introduce you to submitting an ANSYS Icepak 18.2 case to run in batch. This example case is also used in our ANSYS RSM Electronics tutorial using RSM job submission. In this tutorial, we will show a workflow entirely within the Rescale platform. We demonstrate how to launch a Rescale Desktop, load an Icepak case, how to pack it for batch submission, and finally how to run this ANSYS Icepak case in batch. Once you are comfortable with the Rescale platform, you can tailor the workflow to suit your needs. For the basics on Rescale batch, please refer to our guide.

To begin, we will go over how to create an input file in ANSYS Icepak.

First, please use the link below to clone the ANSYS Icepak Example job. Next, click Save on the job to have a copy of the files in your Rescale cloud files. Note, although you can run this job directly, to continue with this tutorial do not submit this case directly. We are cloning the job in order to import the simulation file (ansys-icepak-packed.tzr) into your account.

In this part of tutorial, we will show you how to export a simulation ready for batch submission from ANSYS Icepak using Rescale Desktops. If you have a prepared simulation .tzr file in your local environment ready for batch submission, feel free to skip the next few sections. You can go ahead and begin the batch submission section. Or if you want to just create the packed .tzr from the Icepak GUI, you can skip to this section before going on to batch submission. Otherwise, please continue:

Launching a Remote Desktop on Rescale

  • Start by selecting the Desktops option in the Rescale platform Web UI.
  • Select New Custom Desktop button in the upper left hand corner. This should bring you to a new page where you can give the desktop name an instance if you choose to. Here we’ve named this desktop ANSYS Icepak Desktop.
  • Under 1. Choose Configuration, select the basic Windows configuration.
  • Expand the drop-down menu for 2. Add Software. Search for or select from the menu: ANSYS Icepak Desktop.
  • A Select License – ANSYS Icepak Desktop pop-up menu should now appear. Enter your appropriate ANSYS license information and click OK to continue.
  • You can now also select which version of Icepak you want to use. We will choose 18.2 for this tutorial.
  • Expand the drop-down menu for 3. Add Jobs. Again, you can search for or select from the menu the job you cloned: ANSYS Icepak Example. Click Add under actions.

After making the selections, your screen should look like the following:

Icepak Desktop Setup
  • You can then begin to launch the desktop by clicking on the Launch button in the lower right hand corner of the page. This should bring up the following confirmation dialog:
Icepak Desktop Launch
  • If the settings appear to be correct, click Launch in this menu to start the desktop server. This process should take approximately 5-10 minutes to spin up a new Windows server instance. Please refresh the page every few minutes to update the status of the server. In the 4. Logs menu once the message Server(s) Started is reported the desktop should be ready to use.
  • Click on the Connect button to bring up the connection options. You can choose to connect using your own Windows RDP client or an the In-Browser Desktop that we will use in this case. Please refer to our guide for more information Windows RDP and/or configuring a Rescale Desktop.

Creating an input file from the Icepak GUI

  • Once connected to the Windows desktop, launch ANSYS Icepak by double clicking the Icepak 18.2 shortcut found on the desktop.
  • A Welcome to Icepak dialog box should appear. Select the Unpack button.
  • If you attached the cloned job, in the File selection menu navigate to the Desktop and select the attached_jobs shortcut. This should bring you to the folder that the attached clone job files were extracted to. Select the input folder. Finally select the simulation file ansys-icepak-packed.tzr to open.
  • In your normal workflow instead of Unpacking a job, you would build or modify your model in this step. Once the desired changes have been made, you can Pack the simulation again ready for Icepak batch submission.
  • So if the case is prepared and ready to be analyzed, you can Pack the simulation into a .tzr file by selecting the File > Pack project:

The following dialog should appear

Icepak Desktop Pack Dialog
  • Enter a filename and path for this file. Here for the purposes of the demonstration, we are using the same filename ansys-icepak-packed.tzr in a different directory path.

Uploading the Simulation File to the Rescale Cloud

  • If you created the packed .tzr file from a Rescale Desktop, you can now upload the file to Rescale by running the Cloud Files icon on the desktop. Select the option to Upload from this computer. Navigate to the path of the file and select the newly packed ansys-icepak-packed.tzr.
Icepak Desktop Upload File

If you save this file in the job folder, you use our Sync Files feature to directly import those files into your Rescale account. Please refer to our guide on File Transfer for more information.

  • If you created the packed simulation file from your local desktop environment, you can upload the file using similarly from the Web UI Files option.

Terminate the Desktop

Since we have prepared our simulation and uploaded the file back to the Rescale Cloud, we are done using our Icepak GUI for the time being. We can now shutdown this Desktop instance. You can choose to keep the instance running to perform post-processing after the simulation is completed.

  • In the Rescale Web UI, select Desktops.
  • Check the Select box under your Desktop instance. This instance should be easily identified if you provided it a name earlier.
  • Click the red Terminate button near the top of the page to shutdown this instance.
  • For a guide on using the Rescale desktop please refer to our guide here

Now with the prepared simulation .tzr file, we can set up a Rescale job to submit in batch.

  • Go onto the Rescale platform Web UI and select + New Job.
  • Feel free to rename the job by clicking on the pencil icon next to the job name (Untitled Job) at the top of the page.
  • Click on Use files from cloud storage and select the .tzr file you uploaded from the Desktop instance:
Job Submission Files
  • Or you can also choose to upload a .tzr file from your local machine using the Upload from this computer button at this stage as well.
  • Now we can configure our software package options on the Software Settings page. You can search for or directly select the tile for ANSYS Icepak:
Job Submission Software Selection
  • This should now bring you to the software configuration page for that package.
  • Under the command window, you will need to specify the input file name inside the angle brackets . In this case, replace with ansys-icepak-packed.tzr:
Job Submission Software and License Configuration
  • Below, on this same page, please specify the appropriate license options.
  • Now we can select the type and number of cores to run on in the Hardware Settings page.
  • Choose 2 or more cores for this Icepak problem. This tutorial will be run on 8 Emerald cores and should complete in approximately 16 minutes.
  • There is no need to specify any Post Processing options for this tutorial.
  • After reviewing your selections, your case should now be ready for batch submission at this point.
  • Click the blue Submit button in the top right corner on any of the job configuration pages or in the middle of the Review page.
  • Alternatively, instead of submitting the job, you can elect to Save the problem setup to be run at some later time.
  • You can monitor the status of your job and get information about your cluster in real-time. Here you can see the live-tailing of the output process_output.log as the case begins to run:
Live Tailing
  • A guide on Monitoring Status on Rescale is found here.
  • Once the job has completed its run, you can Download all of the output files from the Results page. You can also launch another Desktop and attach this job to perform post-processing.
  • A guide on Managing your Job Results on Rescale is found here.