How To Optimise Your Use of SIMULIA Abaqus Tokens

Each time you execute Abaqus, one or more “tokens” are “checked-out” from your token pool. Once your execution has finished, the tokens are “checked-in” to the pool and made available for someone else to use. The number of tokens used depends upon the product you’re using and whether or not you are taking advantage of the parallel processing capabilities; pre/post processor Abaqus/CAE always checks out exactly one CAE token. The number of tokens you’ll need to purchase is typically a function of the number of simultaneous Abaqus users you will have, and the degree to which they will use parallel processing.

To optimise your SIMULIA Abaqus token use, follow the hints & tips below…

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Usage Best Practices:

• Best Practices:
  • Activity:
    • Best Practice
  • Pre Processing:
    • Use multiple viewports to view results while setting up a model
    • Close CAE when not in use
  • Job Submission:
    • Don’t use CAE to monitor job status.  Use Notepad or other text editor
    • Submit jobs in series rather than running in parallel
    • Jobs running in parallel on the same computer puts extra strain on the hard disk and memory bus, run jobs using all of the CPUs instead
    • Don’t overallocate the CPUs on your computer
    • Use a cluster if available, don’t bypass the queue
    • ‘abaqus job=job-1 syntaxcheck’ to check syntax and view node/element numbers and connectivity
    • Avoid high use times if possible
  • Post Processing:
    • Use Viewer to review results instead of CAE
    • View multiple ODBs or view states in viewports rather than opening new Viewer sessions

• Use the latest version of Abaqus
• Submitting Jobs in Series using Windows
  • Create a new batch file (e.g. nightjobs.bat)
  • Edit the batch file using Notepad or other text editor:
         call abaqus job=job1 -seq 
         call abaqus job=job2 -seq 
         call abaqus job=job3 -seq 
  • Run the batch job either by double-clicking or typing the filename in a cmd window

Analysis Specific Improvements:

• Use linear analysis (nlgeom=off) when appropriate
  • Activates Abaqus/Foundation
• Use rigid bodies to avoid expense of deformable elements
  • Use a *STATIC step when temperature/electric coupling not needed in a multi-step analysis with coupled temperature-displacement and thermal-electrical-structural elements

Computer Settings:

• Activate Interactive Queuing
  • By default, analysis jobs always queue and CAE/Viewer never queue
  • CAE/Viewer cannot start until queue is empty
• Activate interactive queuing by adding to abaqus_v6.env:
  • lminteractivequeuing = ON
  • CAE/Viewer will now wait in queue and start when first in queue and tokens available
• Disable Hyperthreading in BIOS

Hardware Improvements:

• More Memory
• Fast Hard Disks
• Parallelization Scaling
• GPGPUs