COMSOL is a multi-physics simulation suite.
Category: Engineering
Availability: COMSOL is a licensed product and may not be available to all CCR users. Access is restricted. Contact ccr-help with inquiries regarding access to the COMSOL software.
Usage Notes
To show the software versions:
module avail comsol
Loading the module will set the path and any necessary variables:
module load comsol/group/version
CCR does not provide a license for COMSOL. If your group owns their own, you will need to setup a software module for your group to access this license. Instructions can be found here
Additional Information
- The COMSOL graphical interface benefits from using the CCR's remote visualization nodes available through the OnDemand portal. See the KB article on remote visualization in the OnDemand portal for more info.
- COMSOL jobs can also be launched in unattended "batch" mode. An example SLURM script is available on the CCR front-end at:
/util/academic/slurm-scripts/slurmCOMSOL
NOTE: This is slightly outdated and will need to be modified to point to your group's module as well as specify a cluster, partition and QOS.
- COMSOL manuals are available on the CCR front-end in pdf format and may be viewed using xpdf. The location of the manuals is stored into an environment variable ($COMSOL_PDF_DOCS) when the comsol module is loaded. To list the available files use:
ls $COMSOL_PDF_DOCS/*.pdf
Preventing Quota Problems When Using COMSOL
COMSOL places potentially large logs and working files in the .comsol directory, which by default resides in a user's home directory (i.e. ~/.comsol). There are command-line flags (i.e. -tmpdir and -prefsdir) to redirect these files to an alternative location. You can use these flags to avoid filling up your home directory. Here's an example usage that will redirect log files to `pwd`/prefs and temp files to `pwd`/tmp. Here `pwd` is the working directory from which the comsol program is launched.
module load comsol/comsol/4.3
mkdir `pwd`/prefs
mkdir `pwd`/tmp
comsol -tmpdir `pwd`/tmp -prefsdir `pwd`/prefs -3drend sw
If a user is at the absolute limit of their user-space quota the above approach might not work because comsol still stores 100+ MB of additional configuration items in the ~/.comsol directory. There are no environment variables to redirect the storage of these files. In that case, you can try deleting your ~/.comsol directory and symbolically linking it to your working directory. For example, from your working dir:
rm -Rf ~/.comsol
module load comsol/comsol/4.3
mkdir `pwd`/.comsol
ln -s `pwd`/.comsol ~/.comsol
comsol -3drend sw
Note: When issuing the above commands, be sure to replace comsol/comsol/4.2 with the desired group and version.