Learning Forum

[SebastianU]

Hello everyone,

I am using ANSYS 2021 R2 Student (free student version) and I'm having an issue with the topology optimization. When the optimization is finished after several iteration steps and the optimization output says "Optimization succeeded", instead of marking solution with a green tick, ANSYS marks it with a red lightning and posts this warning: "The optimization solution run was terminated. Check the Optimization output on the Solution Information object for possible causes."

[Sheldon Imaoka]

Hi @SebastianU If you right-click on the "Solution" branch of the topology optimization/structural optimization system in Mechanical, you can select "Open Solver Files Directory". In that directory, do you see a "topo.err" file? Please open it in a text editor to see if there are any error messages. Also, check the contents of "topo.out" with a text editor to see if there are any problems there. Do you see a line
--> Topology Optimizer finished successfully
in 'topo.out'?
The behavior you describe is puzzling since it seems like it has solved the topo optimization problem successfully, although Mechanical is just thinking it's not successful. The red lightning status is disconcerting, but it seems like the runs are successfully completed, as you noted that you're getting the expected results.
Regards Sheldon

[SebastianU]

thank you for your reply! I had a look at both files you suggested.
The file "topo.err" is empty. And I could find the line "--> Topology Optimizer finished successfully" in the file "topo.out". So I guess you are right, Mechanical does not get the information that the topology optimization is done.
I had a look at the other files in the solution folder. As I do not kow how Mechanical and the topology optimizer communicate, I just guessed that "exit.topo" is used for that. That file contains "0" as the only entry. I changed it from 0 to 1 and reloaded the whole project, but that did not help (thought it was worth a shot).
Generally, it is good to have a topology optimization solution which I could work with by just copying it from the folder and reimporting it. However, it would be nice to be able to use the topology optimization in a workflow, which is prohibited by the red lightning status. I would be glad if we could solve this issue :).
Regards Sebastian

[Sheldon Imaoka]

Hi Sebastian I am curious to know if your Workbench project is saved on a network drive? For example, if D:\ is a local hard drive, can you try saving your project as "test.wbpj" on the D:\ root drive (e.g., D:\test.wbpj) and try solving from there (clear generated data, then re-solve)? The warning messages you showed in your first post are all benign except for
The system cannot find the specified path.
which concerns me a bit. This message implies that a certain file can't be found - although you noted that you ensured that there aren't any special characters in your project path name, using something short like D:\test.wbpj would help to confirm that there isn't something causing a problem.
Unfortunately, I haven't come across this problem before, so I am at a loss as to what is causing Mechanical to think that the optimization run did not complete when your output shows that it ran successfully. Do you have special antivirus software running, or do you have restricted user permissions on your Windows machine?
Regards Sheldon

[SebastianU]

and thank you again for your suggestions. I tried the path you suggested and cleared the project data, but that did not solve the issue. Concerning user permissions, I'm the admin so this should not be an issue and did not change the standard user permissions for this account, so this should not be an issue. My antivirus software is bitdefender on top of the standard windows protection. I deactivated both and reran the whole project, but that did not solve the issue either. Afterwards, I uninstalled and reinstalled ANSYS 2021 R2 with and for the admin account and with all antivirus protection deactivated, but that did not help either. The "The system cannot find the specified path." warning keeps reappearing as well. Maybe it would help to know which path the system cannot find, but as I cannot solve an topology optimization successfully, I cannot find out if the path might be printed to the solver's log if it is found by the system. I double-checked if there is an error log after the installation, but there is none.
Regards Sebastian