General help for I-DEAS

contents

SDRC home page (I-DEAS)

System level commands for I-DEAS Master Series

For more details on STOP files and ipurge, read below.

General tips for using I-DEAS

Help! I-DEAS crashed while doing a FEA

The most common reason for this is that you ran out of disk space while trying to solve (or mesh) the model. If it fails while attempting to solve, there are two possible solutions. (You may want to do both.)
  1. Before you try to analyze your model, you should first do a verification run.
    1. When you create your solution set, choose examine/modify, and set the method to verify only. The run time will be much shorter than an actual solution run. I-DEAS will examine your model for errors and estimate the amount of space that will be required to complete the analysis.
    2. When the verification run is complete, you should view the warnings and compare them to how much space you have left according to quota -v. The total free space in your account is the difference between the first and third columns.
    3. If the verification run shows that your scratch files will be very large (larger than, for example, 20M), it may be helpful to move them (see below).
    4. After doing the verification run, go back and modify the solution set again to do a normal run.
  2. Moving your scratch files is frequently helpful, as it reduces the space you need in your quota, and may also significantly speed up the solution run. To move the scratch files:
    1. On the solve form change Path name 1 and Path name 2 to /scratch and then these files will not be counted in your quota. WARNING: your scratch files should NOT be larger than 20M for simple models. If they are, you either have choosen the wrong mesh type or have meshed your model too finely.
    2. Also, move the hypermatrix file (*.mfh) by putting /scratch/ before the name in the form. (You may have to delete the solution set and recreate it to make this work.)

Help! I-DEAS locked up or crashed!

  1. Plotting doesn't work: If you can't get the plotting menu to come up, try lowering all your windows. The plotting form is probably behind something; I-Deas won't re-open it if it is already up.
  2. It just beeps: If your windows are drawing correctly, but I-DEAS beeps or the menus won't work, there is probably a modal input dialog box behind everything that I-DEAS is waiting for. Lower all your windows until you find it, and then cancel it (or finish the operation normally).
  3. Can't even move the windows: If the mouse is stuck or, you can't get *any* menus, even the ones to let you lower the windows, then your entire X session is probably locked up. Best bet is to kill the session and log in again. (There are ways to log yourself out from another terminal that I will have to go into detail about later.)
  4. taking too long: If I-DEAS is actually doing something, but you want it to stop, there are two ways to stop it. (The gentle way first.) If the red stop sign on the icon bar is selected, you probably can click on it and I-DEAS will eventually abort. Sometimes this takes 10 or 20 seconds to work. If you are sick of waiting and want to kill ideas violently, follow the stop instructions below.
  5. File in use by another user or I-DEAS is stuck, make it stop:
    If I-DEAS says your model is in use by another user, you probably have another session running that perhaps crashed half way. Alternately, if the stop sign is deselected, or doesn't work, or you are too impatient to wait for it, or I-DEAS seems totally dead, you can instantly abort your whole I-DEAS session. To fix either of these problems, follow the stop instructions below.
  6. "server crash": stuck in text screen Very rarely, the X session will crash and log you out and leave you at a text screen with a bunch of error messages. You can start over by typing ALT-F1 and then typing startx and then log back in. (Your I-DEAS session may have been left running. If it says your file is "in use by another user", you may need to run ipurge (see below) or stop I-DEAS; see above.) Crashes like this should be very rare. If they occur repeatedly, please let the lab manager know! If it occurs every time you try to do something specific, you can try moving to one of the Sun machines which use different software and should not crash in the same place.
  7. I-DEAS crashes repeatedly in the same place: Occasionally your model might get corrupted. (Common cause of this is running out of disk space.) If your model gets corrupted, I-DEAS might crash while you are editing the model. (This would not log you out as above.) If I-DEAS crashes repeatedly while trying to make the same change, make sure you have enough disk space and then try repairing the model:
    1. Load the model in I-DEAS.
    2. Export the model to an archive file or a simulation universal file. (under File->Export.)
    3. Open a NEW empty model with a different name.
    4. Import the archive file or universal file you just created.
    This usually fixes partially corrupted models. Note that only named parts are exported to archive files, and these parts are placed directly in the bin when the archive file is imported.
  8. I-DEAS crshes while loading the model: If you don't even get a chance to make the archive file, your model may be beyond repair. There are a few more things to try, ask for help. As a last resort, you may have to just start over. If you checked any of your parts into a library, you should be able to create a new model and check them out of the library again, so at least you wouldn't have to start over from scratch.

Why am I out of space, and what are all these ideas9999* files?? (how to use ipurge)

When I-DEAS is running, it creates a number of scratch files (named ideas####.aux and similar). When you exit I-DEAS, it normally deletes these. However, if I-DEAS crashes, these are not deleted. If you delete these scratch files yourself, you may permanently damage the model they are associated with. To be safe, you should instead use the 'ipurge' command to automatically delete unneeded scrach files.

After ipurge runs, it will summarize what it did, and give you a list of models that still have scratch files. The ipurge command also checks for (and removes) stale lock files. After running ipurge, you will see some of the following messages:

The following models may be currently in use
The listed models probably are in use by active I-DEAS sessions.
The following models may need recovery
The listed models are not currently in use, but have associated scratch files that are newer than the model. Deleteing these scratch files could permanently damage the model. You should load this model in I-DEAS, save it, and then run ipurge again later.
Locked models or Other locked models
This will be followed by lines that look like this:
s.lck: STOP_SDRC26132 (lock is active)
This means that the I-DEAS session accessing the model s.mf1 can be aborted by running the command file STOP_SDRC26132. The lock file status description is detailed below.

If I-DEAS has crashed, next time you load the model, it uses these scratch files to reconstruct it. Some of these scratch files are stored on the local machine, so be sure to re-run I-DEAS on the same machine (carnot, mohr, pitot, atwood) that you ran it on when it crashed. (You can type xrsh mohr xterm for instance to open a window on mohr.)

If I-DEAS has left a lock file, ipurge will list the lock status as one of the following:

LOCK is on host atwood
The model was accessed on another host. You must go to that host to check further. (For instance, run xrsh atwood xterm  to open a window on atwood.
lock is active
This indicates that ipurge has confirmed that an active session is currently accessing the model. This session can be aborted with the stop file listed.
lock was stale
This indicates that ipurge has confirmed that the session previously accessing the model was on this host, and it is dead. Ipurge has cleared the lock file so that you should now be able to open the model. You should save the model immediately after opening it to complete the recovery process, and run ipurge again later to clear the scratch files.

I-DEAS is stuck, make it stop

Occasionally, I-DEAS gets stuck, or partially crashes. If it gets stuck, and none of the above items help, the following procedure will abort your I-DEAS session. If I-DEAS crashes or is not exited correctly, parts of it may be left running. The following will clean up any remnants and release locks on your model.
  1. If you have an I-DEAS session open that is working, exit it.
  2. Each time you run I-DEAS, it creates a STOP file in the directory you start I-DEAS. This file will be called STOP_SDRC##### (where ##### is the session number). Pull up a terminal window or log in somewhere else and run this file. (Hint: type STOP and then hit the escape key to complete the filename.) If you have multiple sessions open, you can run ipurge and it will tell you which session has which model open.
  3. Recover your model and clean up scratch files: After aborting an I-DEAS session, or after an ideas session crashes, be sure to restart I-DEAS and reload the model, and then save it. Then, to recover scratch file space, run ipurge (in a command window). For details, see above under ipurge.
  4. Once you have saved your model, you can then exit I-DEAS and run the ipurge command to safely delete any remaining unneeded scratch files. If you delete scratch files by hand before recovering the models, your models may be permanently damaged.
SSD 21-Feb-2002