ElmerSolver on Ubuntu 17.10.1

Discussion about building and installing Elmer
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kataja
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ElmerSolver on Ubuntu 17.10.1

Post by kataja »

ElmerSolver is now available on Ubuntu Artful 17.10.1. This package does not contain ElmerGUI, but it does support mumps and hypre (provided by the Ubuntu Artful distribution) out of the box.

Install from launchpad as follows:

Code: Select all

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:elmer-csc-ubuntu/elmer-csc-ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install elmerfem-csc
Again, these packages are built daily from the devel branch. These packages are largely untested, so feedback is valued.

Cheers,
Juhani
hyperbah
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Re: ElmerSolver on Ubuntu 17.10.1

Post by hyperbah »

Hi @kataja,

I'm trying to install Elmer on my machine, I'm running Ubuntu 17.10. I've tried it with cmake and cmake-gui but I always get an error with the ElmerIceSolvers.so which cannot be built. I need ElmerIce.
Does this new package contain ElmerIce with ElmerIceSolvers ? I've installed it from Launchpad as you mentioned and tried to run ElmerSolver, but it still doesn't find ElmerIceSolvers.so because it is not on my machine.

Cheers,

Alex
kataja
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Re: ElmerSolver on Ubuntu 17.10.1

Post by kataja »

This package does contain ElmerIce. The solver module will be installed in /usr/share/elmersolver/lib/.

Cheers,
Juhani
kcosburn
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Re: ElmerSolver on Ubuntu 17.10.1

Post by kcosburn »

Hello,

First of all, thanks for these packages...after fruitlessly trying to compile things myself, it's nice to have this option.

I am running into trouble, however, when trying to test out the non-GUI tutorial files. It seems like ElmerSolver isn't recognising the meshes? I'm completely new to this program, so it's also possible I'm doing something wrong. I've attached a screenshot of my errors. Now, I get this error regardless of the tutorial I'm trying (this one is the CapacitanceMatrix tutorial). In the .sif file it appears as if the mesh is being called correctly:
Header
Mesh DB "." "mesh"
End
And in the same folder there is, indeed, a mesh file titled "mesh".

Not sure if these tutorials are incompatible with this package's version of ElmerSolver or I'm doing something wrong?

Thanks for your help!
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mzenker
Posts: 1999
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Location: Germany

Re: ElmerSolver on Ubuntu 17.10.1

Post by mzenker »

Hi,

normally there are several mesh files: mesh.nodes, mesh.boundary, mesh.elements, ...
If those exist and live in a diectory called "mesh", then normally it should work. If they lie in the same directory as your sif file, then replacing "mesh" by "." at the MeshDB keyword should do the trick.

HTH,

Matthias
kcosburn
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Re: ElmerSolver on Ubuntu 17.10.1

Post by kcosburn »

Hello,

First, thanks for such a quick reply! I tried your suggestion with the non-GUI tutorial I was working with and still got the same error. However, I tried looking at the GUI tutorials (even though this package doesn't contain ElmerGUI) and tried ElmerSolver on one of them (ComputationOfFringeCapacitance) and everything worked just fine.

I think the issue is that the non-GUI tutorials are incomplete as far as providing everything needed in the meshes (perhaps the idea is that they want you to do all the meshing steps yourself before running the Solver). At any rate, they don't appear to be great out-of-the-box tutorials for beginners!

Anyway, thanks again for your help. :)
mzenker
Posts: 1999
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Location: Germany

Re: ElmerSolver on Ubuntu 17.10.1

Post by mzenker »

Hi,

in the Tutorials usually the first step is to build the mesh using ElmerGrid. I had a brief look into the Tutorials manuals. Normally it should work as indicated both for GUI and non-GUI. At the beginning, you should follow very closely the described process, including names of files and directories, and exactly copy the sif file as it figures in the manual (or the tutorials files). You should only change things if you are more comfortable with Elmer and know what you are doing... ;)

HTH,

Matthias
kcosburn
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Re: ElmerSolver on Ubuntu 17.10.1

Post by kcosburn »

Thank you, yes, everything is making much more sense now. If I'm allowed to be nit-picky, though, it might be nice if inside your .tar files for the tutorials, you had the relevant tutorial manuals (or at least put links to them where you link to the files on your Documentation page). The one for the non-GUI tutorials is not the most straightforward to find! Also, the GUI tutorial manual you link to on that page doesn't correspond to the files inside the gui tutorials tarball.

Not that people can't find the correct manuals eventually, but it would just make everything more user-friendly imo :)
mzenker
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Location: Germany

Re: ElmerSolver on Ubuntu 17.10.1

Post by mzenker »

I agree that the tutorials and their files should be as easy to find as the rest of the documentation, i.e. be consistently linked on the documentation page https://www.csc.fi/web/elmer/documentation.
I hope someone from the Elmer team will fix the links soon... ;)

Matthias
raback
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Re: ElmerSolver on Ubuntu 17.10.1

Post by raback »

Hi

The problem with the non-GUI tutorials is that they precede the GUI tutorials and even the tests. This means that they are pretty old. They should be ok, but since nobody has been updating them over the many years and they are not part of the test suite it is possible that something has changed. For many cases it could be easier to find a test case to start rather than to look at the old GUI totorials.

That being said we should run them through and verify that they work, if not either correct or eliminate the nonworking ones.

What is also missing from the tutorials is some typical workflows using Salome / FreeCAD / Gmsh as preprocessor demonstrating the workflow from start to end.

-Peter
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