The Patran installation supports silent installations, which run in the background with no graphical interface or interaction with the desktop. Installations running in Silent mode rely on a preconfigured answer file to do the installation. Silent installations are generally used in a batch manner to facilitate installation on many machines on a network

To create the answer file you need to run the Patran installation in normal (GUI) mode with a special switch which instructs the installation to record all of your answers in a specified answer file. Here is an example of the command:

z:\patran_20xx_windows.exe -r [-f1"c:\location\filename"]

The command assumes that the installation program is being executed from the Patran DVD-ROM mounted on drive z:, the "-r" switch instructs it to generate the answer file and the optional "-f1" switch specifies the location and name of the answer file. (The brackets around the "-f1" switch indicate that it is optional. You do not need to type the brackets.) If the -f1 switch is not specified, the answer file will be created as follows:

c:\windows\setup.iss

To run installation in silent mode use the
“-s” switch and specify the answer file in this manner:

z:\patran_20xx_windows.exe -s -f1"c:\location\filename"