MSC Nastran Usage

Last updated: July 3, 2024

Translated by Microsoft Copilot

MSC Nastran is a general-purpose finite element analysis program widely used in various fields such as vehicle, ship, engine, precision machinery development, architectural structure analysis, aerospace, etc.

Nastran can only be used within the Genkai system.
The number of MSC products was reduced in the current system because the number of users in the previous system (ITO), which was in operation until February 2024, was small. As a result, it is no longer possible to use MSC products installed on external PCs, etc. Also, GUI startup in remote is restricted (for reasons of being unsupported).

Usage Environment

Node Group A, B, C, Login Node

Version	Kyushu University Members	Academic Research Institution Members	Private Users
2024.1	○	○	－

How to Use (Nastran)

Environment Settings

$ module load nastran/2024.1

Interactive Processing

Nastran is launched with the nast20241 command. The extension of the input data should be ".dat".

Here is an example of performing an analysis with Nastran using the input file "d0307.dat". Options for memory capacity and temporary file are also specified.

$ module load nastran/2024.1
$ nast20241 d0307 mem=1gb scr=yes sdir=/tmp      ← Execution of Nastran

Thread parallel execution specifies the number of parallels with smp=.

$ module load nastran/20241
$ nast20241 d0307 smp=4 mem=1gb scr=yes sdir=/tmp      ← Nastranの4並列実行

The files returned by the normal execution are divided by extension.

`.f04`	CPU time required for execution, input/output time, database usage statistics, etc.
`.f06`	Analysis results
`.log`	Analysis report including account information, error messages, etc.
`.DBALL`	Data blocks and parameters
`.MASTER`	Master database dictionary

If you do not specify an option, the analysis of Nastran will be performed in the background. The processing results will be returned to the directory where the command was entered as soon as the execution is finished. You can switch the processing to the foreground by specifying the "batch=no" option.

$ module load nastran/20241
$ nast20241 d0307 batch=no mem=1gb scr=yes sdir=/tmp      ← Execution of Nastran in the foreground

.f04, .f06, .log files are collected into one file ".out" by adding the "batch=no append=yes" option.

$ module load nastran/20241
$ nast20241 d0307 batch=no append=yes mem=1gb scr=yes sdir=/tmp      ← Execution of Nastran, aggregate output results

Batch Processing

Please perform large-scale analysis by batch processing.

The batch=no option is mandatory for batch processing. Also, you can specify parallel calculation with smp=[thread parallel number] or dmp=[distributed parallel number]. Performance depends on the scale of calculation and analysis content.

Below is an example of a job script for 1 node.

#!/bin/bash
#PJM -L "rscgrp=a-batch"
#PJM -L "vnode=1"
#PJM -L "elapse=00:10:00"
#PJM -j
module load nastran/2024.1
nast20241 d0307 smp=4 batch=no append=yes mem=1gb scr=yes sdir=/tmp

Reference Materials

Manual

MSC Nastran Documentation: Release 2024(https://mscsoftware.my.site.com/customers/s/article/MSC-Nastran-Documentation-Release-2024)

Hexagon SimCompanion

Sample Data

Sample data files of NASTRAN are available from /home/app/Nastran/2024.1/msc20241/nast/demo/.