Altair Compute Console

ACC supports several solvers, including OptiStruct, Radioss, MotionSolve, AcuSolve, AMS (Altair Manufacturing Solver), SEAM and EDEM. Also, some non-solver utilities (HM_Batchmesher) can be controlled in the batch mode. For all these solvers it presents a similar concept: To start the solver you need to select the input file, and optionally specify various applicable command line options. ACC automatically selects the proper solver type, verifies arguments and starts the job. This can be utilized from the available graphical interface or from the command line. The main advantage of using the GUI is to have available help, graphical selector for options, and the GUI also offers a simple scheduler when multiple jobs are submitted for the run on a local host (your laptop or desktop).

Once the job is triggered (either through the command line or the GUI), ACC performs some verifications that the selected options are correct, checks for potential conflicts in the chosen set of options, verifies existence of requested files, and so on. ACC then prepares the necessary environment for the run (set all required environmental variables, paths to utilities; for example, MPI subsystem) and finally starts the job, or places it in the internal queue for execution. Some solvers require running a sequence of different executables (Starter/Engine for Radioss) and ACC automatically controls those. In addition, ACC knows how to start multi-physics solution (FSI: Fluid Structure Interaction), which typically uses two different solvers running simultaneously – ACC starts them and set up communication between different solvers.

Solver specific options are described in the User Guides for each solver, while ACC specific options, and some generic options applicable to more than a single solver are described in "ACC Specific Options".

In more advanced cases, ACC allows you to submit job to other hosts, which can be a single Linux server (single host or a cluster of MPI nodes), or PBS controlled set of hosts. This operation is described in detail in "Remote Job Submission" and "Remote Server User Guide".