Is anyone running Adams for larger (Monte-Carlo) sims and what hardware do you recommend, or any general machine specs. Do you run on Linux or Windows? - Thanks

I use multiple windows machines. As many as I have Adams licenses for.

For any type of DOE, you can create all the adm and acf files first, divide them up between multiple machines, batch them off and then collect the results later.

Smaller jobs, i.e. each run does not use too much memory, I can run up to 4 parallel jobs on my laptop with 12 CPUs available. Just set Adams preferences to use 3 threads each.

As for machine specs: As always, the faster CPU and more memory you have, the better it is.

Thanks @Jesper Slattengren​ much appreciated. Do you have any adm/acf files you can share that I could use as sort of a template. I'm not familiar with the setup to run DOE's in batch. Any guidance is welcome. Thanks again.

That depends on what tool you are using to run the DOE/MC runs. Are we talking Adams/Insight?

Any tool that uses a "fixed" number of runs can be used in this way. Optimization and space-filling DOE methods can of course not create all the run files ahead of time.

We are planning to use Adams/Insight however if it limits me to one CPU/n threads, (do you know the limitations if using Insight, since the run files are not fixed would it limit the CPU to one...with multiple threads) I've been asked to spec a workstation/server that can handle these types of runs but I'm not sure what is best. We have a Linux server for our FEA runs but Adams uses shared memory. Mgt is leaning toward another Linux server but I suspect that might not be the best option. I run locally on a Windows 10 laptop (Intel i7, 32GB RAM) and if we incorporate subroutines then two OS's (and Adams versions) to compile and maintain. I'm leaning towards a Windows workstation/server. But uncertain about specs. Many CPUs (8 or more) with many threads each, lots of fast RAM, SSD drive for I/O with additional storage HDs? Is this how you would consider this problem. Your thoughts/comments are most welcome here. I'm really in a pickle and have very little time to submit something to meet our capital budget deadline (next week). Any help is much appreciated. Thanks.

Using Adams/Insight you can export the files for all the runs. Then easily batch it out on several computers. Limitation is number of Adams licenses. I have often highjacked laptops from colleagues to run part of the run over night or weekends.

You would ask Insight to export all the adm and acf files.

run_001.adm run_001.acf

run_002.adm run_002.acf

..

..

..

run_3000.adm run_3000.acf

 

Assuming that you have 3 Adams licenses that you can use, you would copy run_001 to run_1000 to one computer, run_1001 to run_2000 to the second and run_2001 to run_3000 to the third.

On the first computer you create a batch file "run_all1.bat" with the content (unfortunately looping is not a strong thing in bat files, sometimes I do this in python instead or windows command files):

"C:\Program Files\MSC.Software\Adams\2020_711253\common\mdi.bat" ru-s run_001.acf

"C:\Program Files\MSC.Software\Adams\2020_711253\common\mdi.bat" ru-s run_002.acf

.

.

.

"C:\Program Files\MSC.Software\Adams\2020_711253\common\mdi.bat" ru-s run_1000.acf

 

Do the same on the other machines for the respective runs and kick off all the runs from a command window.

You can also do this on one computer. Just do it in different directories. In the Adams Settings & License --> ASolver --> Preferences, set the numThreads to a suitable value (I have 12 threads available, so I would in this case set numThreads to 4.

 

After all runs are done, collect all results files in one directory. When Insight exported the run files it should also export a cmd file that would loop over all the results files and extract the objectives.

 

This is the principle, there might be some holes in my description as I have not done this for a few years now.

 

So regarding computer: As fast processors as you can get your hand on. At least 12 threads and 32 GB memory. Unless you have very complex Adams models with lots of flex contacts, that should be enough. But can you get more, do so.