Aside from the explicitly supported analysis codes, MSC Nastran, MSC.Marc, and ABAQUS, most any analysis application can be submitted, monitored and managed using Patran’s Analysis Manager general analysis management capability. This is accomplished by selecting Analysis Manager from the Tools pull down menu on the main Patran form. This brings up the full Analysis Manager user interface which is described in the next section, The Main Form.

When the Analysis Manager is accessed in this manner, it keys off the current Analysis Preference. If the Preference is set to MSC Nastran, MSC.Marc, and ABAQUS, the jobname and any restart information is passed from the current job to the Analysis Manager and is brought up ready to submit, monitor, or manage this job.

Any other Preference that is set must be configured correctly as described in Installation and is considered part of the general analysis management. The jobname from the Analysis form is passed to the Analysis Manager and the job submitted with the configured command line and arguments. (How to configure this information is given in Miscellaneous and Applications.) If an analysis code is to be submitted, yet no Analysis Preference exists for this code, the Analysis Manager is brought up in its default mode and the user must then manually change the analysis application to be submitted via an option menu. This is explained in detail in the next section.

On submittal of a general analysis code, the job file is copied to the specified analysis computer, the analysis is run, and all resulting files from the submittal are copied back to the invoking computer
and directory.