Learning Forum

[ngominVT]

To whom it may concern,

 

I'm working on some transformers designs that I am unable to model in Maxwell 2D due to their geometry so I use Maxwell 3D. However magnetostatic simulations take 3 to 5 hours. Eddy current simulations take 9 to 16 hours. And the computer as it is can't run transient analysis at all. My research group provides me a Dell Desktop with 32 GB of RAM and an i7 processor. I am aware that this is not really sufficient computer hardware to run Maxwell 3D. I would especially like to run transient analysis to apply my high frequency square wave excitation to my transformer.

 

I was wondering if someone that works at Ansys or is knowledgeable with Ansys could recommend me some computer specifications that would allow me to run fast Maxwell 3D simulation?I was thnking of upgrading to a Dell Workstation with a xeon processor. My hope is to be able to run transient simulation and to run simulations with somewhere between 1 hour and 2 hour run time just using default mesh setting. A computer recommendation from the Ansys community would be great. 

[pgl]

Hi ngominVT, 

The Dell Precision Workstations are popular with many ANSYS users. The more RAM and CPU's the better. Be sure that you follow our supported hardware guidelines, published here. 

But before you spend any money, check that you are utilizing all of the cores of your i7, which I believe is a quad core processor. As an academic product user, we provide 16 cores per user for Teaching & Research licenses, and the ability to extend the Research license cores with add on HPC licenses. Take a look at your "HPC and Analysis Options" in Electronics Desktop and be sure you have set the HPC License to "Pool", and "Use legacy Electronics HPC License" to "True".  Also check that you a good chunk of hard drive disk space available, for most efficient model loads/saves. 

I hope this helps?

 

 

[AmirKrz]

Hi

I have a similar problem.

I've upgrade my PC's RAM to 24GB but Ansys Electronics uses just 13% of it. And no increase in transient simulation pace has observed.

so whats the matter you think? 

Thank you 

[pgl]

Generally model complexity and adaptive meshing settings will impact how much memory is used during a solution (they also impact solution speed). However, the speed of the solution would only improve from increasing RAM if your system was resorting to a page-file, or getting close to needing to use a page-file.

Assuming there's enough memory, then the actual processor and number cores applied will have the most impact on the solution speed if we are only considering hardware. Have you tried any of the HPC settings to bring more cores into play?      

 

[AmirKrz]

Thank you for the consideration

My computer engage an Intel i3 3.7GHz with 4 Cores so how should I set HPC settings to have maximum simulation speed?

and another question is :

Apart from model complexity, how can I improve the simulation speed? 

generally is the virtual memory (page-file) effective impressively?

Thank you so much

[pgl]

The Maxwell online help provides a lot of guidance regarding setting up Maxwell for a HPC solution, and also optimizing the memory settings.

Take a look at these sections: 

• Maxwell Help > Specifying Solution Settings > Changing Memory Settings


• Maxwell Help > Running Simulations > Distributed Analysis


• Maxwell Help > Working with Maxwell Projects and Designs > Setting Options in Maxwell > Setting HPC and Analysis Options