help for installing Elmer 64bits on Windows 7

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sebastien ROUQUETTE
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help for installing Elmer 64bits on Windows 7

Post by sebastien ROUQUETTE »

Here i am again... i have installed the elmer7 version 6064 win32 and i want to switch to elmer7 64bits (version available 5884). I removed the old elmer7 32bits and unzip the compressed filed elmer 764bits. Previously i installed MinGW64 and adde to my path variable.
Well i end up with a folder where there is bin, etc... but no ElmerGUI, just ElmerSolver, ElmerGRID. So i don't understand, there is no ElmerGUI in 64bits or i needed to keep it from the 32bits previous one... and do i do with the elmer 64bits files? i'm a bit lost at this point?
cheers
Rouquette Sébastien
University of Montpellier / Mechanical and Civil Engineering Lab. / Welding Group
Captain Slow
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Re: help for installing Elmer 64bits on Windows 7

Post by Captain Slow »

Sebastien, did you solve your problems?

I'm trying to install/create a 64 bit version on Win 7, though am really not sure what to do! Is the correct process to install 32 bit, then replace the \bin folder with the one from the 64 bit download? I guess installing MinGW-w64 really is required(?), which is something else which looks daunting to the non-expert an not neccessarily worth my time if it is still not clear how to subsequently get Elmer 7 x64 bits working.

Would be much easier if there was a compiled 64 bit release along with the 32 bit version.

John
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Re: help for installing Elmer 64bits on Windows 7

Post by mzenker »

I agree - I asked earlier if there is a performance gain to be expected when using 64-bit Elmer instead of 32-bit, but received no answer (viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3128).
In the meantime, those who want the most recent binaries have to use the 32-bit distribution or compile on their own - which is not straightforward under Windoze...

Matthias
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Re: help for installing Elmer 64bits on Windows 7

Post by raback »

Hi

The Windows installers are somewhat problematic. The ElmerTeam does not use Windows almost at all. We do have some virtual Windows machines that make nightly builds but the installers should be updated and this does not really fit in any of the many projects were Elmer is involved. So unfortunately fixing these have very low priority.

Now I just uploaded some fresh Windows builds to
http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/sci/physics ... n/windows/

There is the full-blown installer and also 32- and 64-bit zip packages. The installer should be ok except that after updating some libraries the ElmerPost does not seem to work (missing glaux.dll library). If that does not bother you, then you can use that.

Now the zip packages are somewhat problematic in that they require the same gcc/gfortran compilers if you need to compile stuff of your own. There should be better instructions how to install them. For convenience I put the compiler version 4.7.0 used for the 64-zip version to the same directory. One might have chances to compile the dll:s if this is present. Of course if you don't need to compile the 64-bit version could be rather easy way to go beyond the memory limitations.

-Peter
mzenker
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Re: help for installing Elmer 64bits on Windows 7

Post by mzenker »

Hi Peter,

thank you for updating the binaries.
Just to be sure: the installer installs the 32-bit version even if the OS is 64-bit, is that right?

Note: It would be a good thing for the Elmer user community to find a way to give the Windows installers a higher priority, since AFAIK most Elmer users work under Windoze (even if, like me, some would prefer to use Linux, but cannot do it because of company policies etc.). Is there really no project where Elmer is used under Windoze?

Matthias
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Re: help for installing Elmer 64bits on Windows 7

Post by raback »

Hi Matthias

Yes, it would be great if the Windows version would deserve more attention. If some mingw wizard would like to create a fresh environment for doing this we could certainly provide the current scripts.

The problem with the open source model is that there is nobody paying for these things. Elmer is mainly developed within a number of application projects in different areas that are not depending on Windows. Also the Windows installers are not the first thing that people want to do on their freetime. Many perople have no problem using some spare time for interesting modeling questions but nobody seems to have an itch for Windows installers.

We have been considering changing the gnu autotools (make system) to cmake which would make the cross-compilation more straight-forward. This would ideally be done in conjunction of some code restructuring so it is a bigger task...

-Peter
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Re: help for installing Elmer 64bits on Windows 7

Post by Captain Slow »

I'd echo Matthias' comments that a large amount of your users will use Windows, presumably because being open source means that people starting out/seeing if FEA can provide some useful information will be reasonably new to conducting simulations. That was certainly the case for us when we started with Elmer, with very limited linux experience, no FEA/CFD etc experience, but significant LabVIEW/Matlab experience. Having a 64 bit version ''off the shelf'' would be useful for when such people try to simulate more complicated problems.

Having said that, Peter, I completely understand your point about manpower/project use by the Elmer team.


Having downloaded the 64 bit zip files, is my understanding correct that ElmerSolver should simply work from the command prompt? I've tried running one of my simulations from the command line using the 32 and 64 bit versions. 32 bit version works fine, 64 bit does not, returning an error very early in the execution:

Code: Select all

MAIN: Reading Model: ELMERSOLVER_STARTINFO
ERROR:: Model Input: Unknown iinput field in header section: case.sif
Attached is my sif file....I wonder if anyone knows where I've gone wrong?

All the best,
John
Attachments
case.sif
(2.06 KiB) Downloaded 401 times
hamed
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Joined: 12 Oct 2009, 18:28

Re: help for installing Elmer 64bits on Windows 7

Post by hamed »

Dear Elmer group
Hi
I want to install Elmer 64 bit on my my win7x64. I’ve already downloaded the following packages (64bit-mingw/ and Elmer7.0-rev6431-win64.zip) as Peter said.

Now I’m really confused as I can’t find any *.exe file in the downloaded packages after extracting. Does anybody know what the next steps are?

I’ll be extremely grateful if somebody can help with a detailed instruction for installation of Elmer 64 bit. I wish there were a windows installer for this purpose.

Best Regards, Hamed
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