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Running and monitoring simulations from home

18 REPLIES 18
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Message 1 of 19
ryan.arnaudin
3797 Views, 18 Replies

Running and monitoring simulations from home

In the interest of making products suited to our users' needs I'm curious how many simulation users are running or monitoring simulations from home.

 

Do you run or monitor simulations from home or outside of work? When and how often? To what extent? How -- email/text notifications, take laptop home, remote desktop, etc?

 

Thanks!

 

Ryan Arnaudin

User Experience Designer

Digital Simulation
Autodesk, Inc.

 

18 REPLIES 18
Message 2 of 19
Royce_adsk
in reply to: ryan.arnaudin

For our users that monitor this forum, please give Ryan as much information as possible.  This is your chance to help drive product design!



Royce.Abel
Technical Support Manager

Message 3 of 19
punisher
in reply to: ryan.arnaudin

Yes I do. RUN, not monitor.

 

Simulation MP 2012 - Static and MES; some thermal

 

Use a takehome Dell M6400

 

What else do you need to know Ryan?

John Evans
Autodesk Certified Professional

http://designandmotion.net
Message 4 of 19

How often do you take the laptop home to run simulations? What situations require you to run simulations at home (e.g. too many to get done during the day, need to keep an eye on them while they are running, etc.)?

 

Do you find anything particularly painful with the process?

 

Thanks,

 

Ryan

Message 5 of 19
pmoorthy
in reply to: ryan.arnaudin

I queue up a lot of simulations to run over-night and over weekends on my work computer. Because of that, I tend to monitor convergence and results from my home computer. I have to VPN to my work network and then remote-desktop to my work-station. There have been times when the solver has unexpectedly quit or has an error and having the ability to remotely monitor has saved time. If this process could be streamlined, it would be more helpful. 

Is there anything else you would like to know? 

 

 

Message 6 of 19
ryan.arnaudin
in reply to: pmoorthy

This is great information; thanks for the replies.

 

I'd love to hear if others are doing the same, or something different.

 

Ryan Arnaudin

User Experience Designer

Digital Simulation
Autodesk, Inc.

Message 7 of 19
john
in reply to: ryan.arnaudin

I rarely ever need to run/monitor solutions while I’m traveling but when I do it is super valuable. 

Anything that would make it easier to monitor and dispatch results for viewing would be welcome.

Maybe add an option to email a compressed results file to the progress notifications portal?

Message 8 of 19
nhahn
in reply to: ryan.arnaudin

Ryan -

 

I am in favor of remote notifications and control.  Our IT policies are quite restrictive so VPNs, remote desktop sessions, etc. are rarely used, though I would if I could.  We don't do analysis on laptops either.  But anything that can be done over email would be helpful, I guess.  It doesn't happen all the time but when I do it seems to come in bursts, and when I have an analysis on a deadline it always seems like I spend the day getting the setup right and wish I could leave rather than having to monitor the simulations at the end of the day. To date I haven't used the email notification but that's because just knowing what happened isn't enough, I don't have any way to fix things if they arent working as expected.

 

Not sure exactly what I'm suggesting but the ability to do some basic commands like start/stop/run for so many iterations/skip to the next analysis in the queue would be pretty neat over email.  Of course, this would mean getting some convergence or summary results sent in addition to just a message saying analysis finished successfully.  Preferably there would be some way to protect & authenticate this info too, like a password-protected zip file, or signed emails, or some such.  I'm sure getting a VPN in place to run remote desktop securely would be the best, I guess.  Hope this helps.

 

Nick

Message 9 of 19

Thanks John and Nick. It's great to hear what the different needs are for different work situations.

Message 10 of 19
PeteMaxfield
in reply to: nhahn

Excellent feedback, Nick.

 

Granted there are many avenues we could take for the final user client, such as email, web client, smart phone app, or light desktop app for a home PC.

 

You mention times when there are bursts of activities. Would it make the most sense to aggregate notifications, to avoid too many emails all coming in at once? 

 

Consider a typical busy period, where most of your analyses run smoothly, but a couple need refinement, and a couple fail outright. What would you want to tackle first? What minimal amount of information would be useful from each type of case?

 

Thanks all for your feedback,

Pete

User Experience Designer

Autodesk Simulation 

 

 



Peter Maxfield
Message 11 of 19
nhahn
in reply to: PeteMaxfield

When I say bursts of activity means I may only use CFD a few days per month, but often I need the results fairly quickly.

 

Regarding aggregating of messages, I wouldn't want them more than say every 15-30 minutes, but wouldn't want to wait much longer than that in case something needs fixing.

 

Regarding specific contact methods, I hadn't even thought about the smartphone app.  That could kill a lot of birds with one stone, especially since the IT folks are already dealing with those as inevitable.  The only stumbling block would be bandwidth-intensive interactions for debugging purposes.  I almost exculsively use cut planes for that purpose, so maybe one or summary plane snapshots could be sent or requested?

 

The other thing which would be really useful in some cases (actually in-person as well as remotely) would be the ability to monitor predefined derived quantities such as total flow through an inlet, pressure drop between 2 points, lift or drag force over a defined set of surfaces, etc. *during* rather than after the solution.  Like monitor/summary points, but much more powerful. Being able to see these values change would let me know if things are going in the right direction or wandering off much better than just convergence plots.

 

Nick

Message 12 of 19
Royce_adsk
in reply to: ryan.arnaudin

One thing I would like to bring up to see if this fills in most of a users need or at least drive conversation to specifics.  In CFD 2013 we now have the ability to send the convergence plot image (average plot only) at specific intervals which can give you an idea on stability and at the end of the run we can also attach the summary file and status file to review.  Do you feel comfortable with those to fill your need or would being able to define maybe a few static images of results that could also be sent over useful as well?  

 

I see the notifications as a way to be comfortable that when you come in on Monday you have something to work with.  If the model fails you learn that from the notifications and that might spark you to get on VPN/drive into work to fix the model and start again.

 

Personally, I think if you were running multiple scenarios AND had decision center features like parts, planes, etc. Maybe some of those can be sent with the notifications as well.  One issue with this is that if you did dynamic images the file size gets very large. In this case these could be uploaded to your autodesk 360 account automatically to be downloaded and viewed anywhere.

 

-Royce



Royce.Abel
Technical Support Manager

Message 13 of 19
john
in reply to: Royce_adsk

It sounds like 2013 implementation will provide very useful remote status updates.  I'm looking forward to getting it up and running!

 

John

Message 14 of 19
dbowman
in reply to: PeteMaxfield

Hello, I do it backwards... I run CFD on my Home PC while traveling to various offices. It is a BIG home PC. I simply use GOTOMYPC to connect from anywhere (even while on a cruseship) and it works great. I set the Notifications to text my phone as the solver progresses.

 

I keep the solid models (Solidworks) on my laptop so I can modify the geometry... create a parasolid (much smaller model) and transfer the model via GOTOMYPC. My models are relativly complex centrifugal pumps but this method works well for me.

 

By the way, it is cheap... about $20 per month.

 

Dennis Bowman, P.E.

Message 15 of 19
ryanholbird
in reply to: ryan.arnaudin

We have a dedicated server machine with only the CFD software installed.  I can access this through VPN from anywhere I have an interenet connection via Window's Desktop Sharing.  I simply copy a .SAT file from my 3D cad software to the server then do everything remotely.  This way I can log in or out of the running server whenever I want to check the status.  This has been a lifesaver when I expect to have a solution for a presentation on the following day; if I check in and see a mesh or solve error, I can correct the cad model on my laptop, upload it, and run it again. 

Message 16 of 19
john
in reply to: john

It would be helpful if the files attached to the notification email had .txt exensions added. My android mail program does not know how to display the .st and .sum files.

 

John

Message 17 of 19
Royce_adsk
in reply to: john

Good observation on the extensions.  Can you associate new extensions to programs in an android/iOS to something new like you can in windows?

 

Maybe it is time to consider changing the file name format to something like 'design name' + 'scenario name' _summary.txt, 'design name' + 'scenario name' _status.txt, etc.

 

Just a thought.

 

-Royce



Royce.Abel
Technical Support Manager

Message 18 of 19
herman
in reply to: ryan.arnaudin

I use a dedicated cfd/fem solver computer with maximum power available for a reasonable price. I use GotoMyPC to monitor from where I can and create presentations remotely and synch to my laptop that goes with me.

 

Works well from all over the world.

Message 19 of 19
herman
in reply to: ryan.arnaudin

The reason I have to monitor regularly is because the solver will "Exit unexpectedly" and there is no way to know why. Sometimes a restart from the last saved step works and sometimes not. I typically have large models (>10M nodes) that run for many hours to converge.

 

I connect to make sure it is working.

Herman

.

 

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