ANSYS on AI.Panther

ANSYS Fluent 2026 R1.04 is available to all AI.Panther users. This article covers running Fluent interactively via Open OnDemand and headless as a Slurm batch job.

Load the software into your shell with:

module load ansys

 

Fluent's license allows 4 parallel processes per job. Keep -t at 4 or fewer.

Interactive use (GUI)

There are two ways to get a graphical ANSYS session, both running on a VDI node.

Option A: ANSYS Workbench (recommended)

This launches the Workbench project schematic directly.

  1. Sign in to ood.fit.edu.
  2. Go to Interactive Apps > GUIs > ANSYS Workbench.
  3. Fill in the form. Leave GPUs set to 1 so Workbench runs with hardware graphics acceleration.
  4. Click Launch, then Launch ANSYS Workbench once the session is ready.

From the Project Schematic, drag an analysis system from the Toolbox onto the canvas to open a solver. Fluid Flow (Fluent) is the one to use for CFD. Fluent launched this way inherits the same hardware acceleration as Workbench.

Option B: Desktop session

Use this to run Fluent standalone without going through Workbench.

  1. Sign in to ondemand.fit.edu.
  2. Go to Interactive Apps > Desktop.
  3. Choose a partition and click Launch.
  4. When ready, click Launch Desktop.
  5. Click Applications > Terminal Emulator.
  6. In the terminal:
module load ansys
vglrun fluent 3ddp

The vglrun prefix routes 3D rendering to the vGPU on the VDI node. Without it, the viewport falls back to software rendering.

3ddp selects 3D double precision. You can also launch Workbench from here with vglrun runwb2.

Headless use (Slurm)

Submit solver runs through Slurm. Save the script below as run_fluent.sbatch, replacing input.jou with the path to your Fluent journal file:

#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH --job-name=fluent_run
#SBATCH --partition=med
#SBATCH --nodes=1
#SBATCH --ntasks=4
#SBATCH --time=04:00:00
#SBATCH --output=fluent-%j.out

module load ansys

fluent 3ddp -g -t${SLURM_NTASKS} -i input.jou

Submit with:

sbatch run_fluent.sbatch

Flag notes:

  • -g runs without a GUI.
  • -t${SLURM_NTASKS} sets the number of parallel processes.
  • -i input.jou reads Fluent commands from a journal file.

Partitions available for batch solver runs:

Partition Max walltime
short 45 minutes
med 4 hours
long 168 hours

Troubleshooting

"Software rasterizer found, hardware acceleration will be disabled." In a Desktop session, rerun with the vglrun prefix. In the ANSYS Workbench app, relaunch with GPUs set to 1.

"This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized." Runtime libraries are missing on the node. Submit a ticket (link below).

Getting help

Submit a ticket at help.fit.edu. Include your job ID (squeue --me) and the tail of the output file.

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