Center for Computational Research

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

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

• 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.

• On March 6, 2015, COMSOL and UB CCR hosted a computer modeling workshop focusing on COMSOL and other commercial engineering solvers. The workshop included instructions for using the UB CCR cluster to accelerate a variety of engineering codes, including COMSOL, ABAQUS, LSDYNA, ANSYS/CFX, STARCD, and STARCCM+. Click the attachment (below) to download the presentation.