FEA (Windows 64 bit install)- The solver does not run

[XavierC]

Hello!
I am starting using FreeCAD, especially to perform FEM.

I have recently installed version 0.17.13541 for 64 bits on Windows 10.

As advised, I tried the 1st tutorial FEM CalculiX Cantilever 3D. First steps (visualization of results) are ok. However at the step “running the FEA”, pressing the “write” button is ok (message "Write completed!"), but pressing the “execute” button provides the message “Executing solver...” and nothing happens any more.

I understood from the “install” page that CalculiX is installed in the package for Windows (however this is not perfectly clear to me…).
I nevertheless decided to install the solver. Several distributions are proposed on the page http://www.calculix.de/ , I took the bconverged (CalculiX_2_10_win_002). I then reinstalled FreeCAD, but this changed nothing.

Please help !

[PrzemoF]

Welcome to the forum!
Did set binary location of the ccx in FreeCAD settings? I'm not sure if that's the problem, but that's a very common situation. Points 4 and 5 here [1]

[1] https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 16#p285016

[XavierC]

Thanks for your welcome!

And many thanks for your answer!

In Options, the box CalculiX binary "Search in known binary directories" was checked.

I found the ccs.exe file in the FreeCAD 0.17\bin directory. I unchecked the box, set the correct path, and the solver now runs!

(Probably something should be fixed in the package so that is becomes automatic)

Therefore this issue is closed.
Thanks again!

[PrzemoF]

I think it's OK, you can't set the path without un-checking the box, at least on the current development version. I'm not sure what version do you use. And if you have ccx in some place where the system can run it it will "just work".

[bernd]

I recommend to use 0.18 dev version if you would like to give FEM a try. We have fixed tons of bugs and made a lot of improvements in FEM lately. Ahh and yes on windows you do not need to install anything or set up anything. Just use FEM, mesher and solver are included.

[XavierC]

Many thanks for your advice.

I would very much like to try 0.18 dev. version.

On the page https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/rele ... g/0.18_pre, clicking on the FreeCAD_0.18.15780_x64_dev_win.7z link leads to "page unknown"...

[Kunda1]

On the page https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/rele ... g/0.18_pre, clicking on the FreeCAD_0.18.15780_x64_dev_win.7z link leads to "page unknown"...

https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/rele ... 015_x64.7z works for me

[XavierC]

Sorry, I am new in this environment!

Download successful, unzip ok, launch ok!

Again, many thanks!