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Installation and running instructions

System requirements

DeepLines may be installed and run on any Intel x86 based PCs and servers under any of the following operating systems or more recent ones:

  • Windows 10

  • Windows Server 2008 (64 bits mode)

Note that Windows XP, Windows Vista or older systems are not supported.

DeepLines must then be installed on all end-user machines. Administration rights are required to this purpose and, when necessary, define or modify the PRDLM_LICENSE_FILE environment variable used to specify the path to your network license file.

Warning

DeepLines requires universal C runtime in Windows, which should be installed silently during setup.

In case of issues, the runtime can be obtained from the following URL:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3118401/update-for-universal-c-runtime-in-windows

FLEXNET license server

To use the present version of PRINCIPIAs software, the Flex Net Publisher License Manager version 11.12 (or later) must be installed on the license server.

The FLEXNET installation guide may be downloaded from PRINCIPIAs website at:

http://transferts.principia.fr/dl4881312751

The FLEXNET Publisher setup application may be downloaded from PRINCIPIAs website. Select the appropriate version depending on your OS version (32 or 64bits):

Linking with the license file

Once the setup is complete, it is necessary to create the link between the application installed on the end user machine and the license file. This link is made through a Windows environment variable named PRDLM_LICENSE_FILE.

The PRDLM_LICENSE_FILE environment variable must be defined if not existing on the end user machine or modified as needed. Creating or updating the environment variable requires administration rights on the machine.

Content of the PRDLM_LICENSE_FILE variable must be set as follows depending on whether the license file is stored on a license server or stored on the local machine.

License file location PRDLM_LICENSE_FILE value Comment
Server 17501@Servername Depends on license server name
Local c:\flexlm\license.dat Set the actual path to the file

Troubleshooting your installation

Once you have successfully installed the software on your machine, there is a recommended check list to review before you actually start working with the latest release.

Check the availability of your license file: When started, the GUI will automatically check that a license file is available either on your hard drive or through your local network. Most of the installations are based on network licensing, which means that the license file is located on a local server. The path to access your license file must be specified through a system variable named PRDLM_LICENSE_FILE. If you were not given administrator privileges, then contact your network administrator to check the content of this variable and modify it when necessary.

Reduce the hardware acceleration: The hardware acceleration is a parameter that controls whether the graphics will display on your screen using the main processor or the graphics driver. Using the latter allows better performances when displaying complex 3D graphics. A few compatibility problems have however been observed with the previous release between particular graphics drivers and several OpenGL subroutines used by the GUI to display the objects in the 3D View window. This bug has now been fixed for most of the graphics drivers available on the market, but could however persist on particular instances. This bug would cause the GUI to close abruptly without displaying any error message. We therefore strongly recommend that you set the hardware acceleration to zero. This operation is perfectly safe and has no effect at all on the performances of the main processor.

Files compatibility: Both GUI and solver programs support backward compatibility. This means that you can re-open any model file (.DSK) or simulation results file (.DSS) created with a previous version of the GUI, using this latest release of the GUI. You can also re-run the solver with any analysis input file that used to run with a previous version of the solver. However we do not support forward compatibility. You will not be able to re-open with a previous release of the GUI any model file or simulation results file that was generated from scratch or saved using the Version 4.3 of the GUI. Should you try this, then an error message would display, indicating that the file format is not correct. Similarly, there is no guarantee that you will be able to run an analysis input file (*.LOG) using a previous version of the solver, in case the file was created with the latest release of the GUI. It is however worth noting that most of the existing keywords can be properly interpreted by the latest version of the solver and the previous one.

Open, save and re-open the model files created with a previous release: As you open a model file that was created with a previous release of the GUI, it is recommended to save the file, then close the file and finally re-open this newly saved file. This operation will ensure full compatibility of the files and specifically of the analysis input files (*.LOG) that will be created with the latest version of the GUI. For instance, the blank spaces in the support vessels names will be automatically replaced with underscore characters. This further ensures that the hydrodynamic database file name used to store the RAO data will contain no blank space as required: a blank space in the .HDB file name would indeed cause an error as the solver reads the analysis input file.

Update the path to the solver executable file: Once you have installed the GUI, you must check that the path to the folder containing the executable file for the solver is correct. This can be done from the Settings menu by selecting the Path to executable item.

This path will then be stored within the registry keys as you close the GUI. In case the path is not correct, you will not be able to run the solver. Should the path refer to an older version of the solver, then compatibility problems might occur when reading the analysis input files (*.LOG).