When you select Install Abaqus Product & Licensing from the startup screen on Windows platforms, the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010, 2008, and 2005 runtime libraries are installed automatically along with Abaqus. These libraries are required to run Abaqus. The following libraries are installed:

• 64-bit 2010 libraries

• 64-bit and 32-bit 2008 SP1 libraries

• 64-bit and 32-bit 2005 SP1 libraries

Note that on Windows/x86-64, both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the 2005 and 2008 libraries are required and installed.

If necessary, you can install the Microsoft Visual C++ runtime libraries independently of the product installation, by selecting Install Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1, 2008 SP1, and 2010 SP1 Runtime Libraries from the startup screen. Alternatively, you can execute the following installers on the Abaqus Licensing & Products DVD:

win86_64/2010_SP1_vcredist_x64.exe (64-bit libraries)
win86_64/2008_SP1_vcredist_x64.exe (64-bit libraries)
win86_64/2005_SP1_vcredist_x64.exe (64-bit libraries)
win86_64/2008_SP1_vcredist_x86.exe (32-bit libraries)
win86_64/2005_SP1_vcredist_x86.exe (32-bit libraries)

Message Passing Interface (MPI) components must be installed to 1) use MPI-based parallel job execution in Abaqus/Standard, 2) to use domain-level parallelization in Abaqus/Explicit, or 3) to run any job in Abaqus/CFD (regardless of the number of CPUs). If your Abaqus users will be running these types of simulations, you must have the required MPI components preinstalled or allow the Abaqus installer to install them for you:

• On Windows/x86-64, the Abaqus product installer automatically installs the Microsoft MPI 3.0 libraries, if necessary. If desired, you can install these libraries separately by selecting Install Microsoft HPC MPI Redistributable Pack from the startup screen. This option is not shown if the libraries are already installed on your computer. You can also launch the Microsoft MPI installer separately from the command line by executing the following file on the Abaqus Licensing & Products DVD:

  win86_64/msmpi_3.0_x64.msi

  (If you have 64-bit Windows HPC Server 2008, however, this is not needed because the MPI components are included with the operating system.)

• On Linux 64-bit (lnx86-64) operating systems, the Abaqus product installer installs the Platform Computing Message Passing Interface libraries (Platform MPI 9.1.3).

For more information on MPI and thread-based parallel processing modes, see “Parallel execution,” Section 3.5 of the Abaqus Analysis User's Guide.

Any other third-party software that will be used in conjunction with the Abaqus products (compilers, operating system patches, etc.) should be installed before installing the Abaqus products.

When the installer runs, you will be prompted for the items below. When a file location or directory is requested, you can click Choose to browse for the path.

• The network license server host name. The installation procedure will attempt to determine this information automatically, but you have the option of changing the default choice. Make sure the appropriate license server host is entered. If a set of redundant servers should be used, enter the host names of the redundant servers in the boxes provided in the dialog box (see “Redundant FLEXnet license server configurations,” Section 3.4, for details on installing redundant license servers). The installation will define settings in the Abaqus environment file according to information detected in the Abaqus license file on the server. If the license server contains an academic teaching license, Abaqus will be configured to use this license by default (see “License management parameters,” Section 4.1.6).

• The URL for the Abaqus HTML documentation or path to the base installation directory (simulia_dir) under which the PDF documentation files are installed (if only PDF was installed or if you prefer PDF over HTML). Entering this path when the installer prompts you will configure the abaqus doc command to open PDF rather than HTML documentation. See “Abaqus documentation,” Section 3.2.11 of the Abaqus Analysis User's Guide, for more information.

  If you did not install the Abaqus HTML documentation before the products or if you do not specify the URL, you must perform additional steps to provide access to the HTML documentation (see “Setting the documentation URL after installation,” Section C.2).

• The installation directory. Specify the Abaqus parent directory (referred to as abaqus_dir), which is the location where all installed Abaqus releases will be stored. The default location is the current working directory on Linux platforms and C:\SIMULIA\Abaqus on Windows platforms. You should not install Abaqus in a directory that indicates a specific Abaqus release number; the release-specific directory will be created by the installer. For example, all files needed to run Abaqus 6.14-1 will be installed in abaqus_dir/6.14–1/.

• The location of the Abaqus start-in directory (Windows platforms only). Specify the location where user files created during Abaqus interactive sessions are stored and the home directory for the Abaqus command window. The default location is C:\temp. (This can be changed by users later; see “Common customizations on Windows platforms,” Section 5.1.2.) Ensure that the start-in directory has write permission for all users.

• If the installation program detects a wide area network (WAN) license file, you will be prompted for information about the geographic location of your computer. This information is used to automatically set the computer_location environment file parameter and enable license usage logging for report generation. For more information, see “Reporting FLEXnet license usage data,” Section 3.8.

When the installation is complete, a record of the installation and a listing of the licensed products is written to a file called Abaqus 6.14_release_InstallLog.log in the abaqus_dir/release/installation_info/ directory. This file is helpful for troubleshooting problems, and it should not be removed.

When you install the Abaqus products on a computer, the installation creates a file called installer.properties in the abaqus_dir/release/installation_info directory. This file, called the replay file, contains information that was used during the product installation, such as the installation directory, license server host, and documentation URL. The -replay command option is available to repeat a previous installation on identical platforms without reentering the same information for each installation. You can use this option to perform a silent installation (no graphical user interface is displayed). It performs an installation identical to the previous installation (same installation directory, same license server host, etc.) using the information stored in the replay file.

The information that was entered for the first installation must be valid for subsequent installations that use the -replay option. All installation error checking is skipped when this option is used. You should make sure that the system meets the requirements as specified in Appendix A, “System requirements notes,” and that you have write permissions and sufficient disk space in the installation directory before performing the installation. To use the -replay option, do the following:

The installation procedure creates a unique command for each release of Abaqus. This command is written in the Commands directory below the Abaqus parent directory (abaqus_dir). For example, the command to run Abaqus 6.14-1 is abq6141. The command to run subsequent maintenance releases of Abaqus 6.14 is abq614n, where n is the maintenance delivery.

The installation procedure also creates a link called abaqus to the command for the latest release of Abaqus installed. For a list of all Abaqus command line options, use the help command line option with the appropriate Abaqus execution command. For example, to see the command line options for Abaqus 6.14-1, type abq6141 help. For a detailed description of Abaqus command line options, see Chapter 3, “Job Execution,” of the Abaqus Analysis User's Guide.

On Windows platforms the Commands directory path is added automatically to all users' paths during installation. On Linux platforms the Commands directory should be added to each user's path manually. Alternately, a link for each Abaqus release can be defined at the system level or for each user, pointing to the appropriate command in the Commands directory.