Configuring ANSYS, Cygwin and the Windows Environment
This page provides instructions on how to install and configure Ansys to work with the APDL JR Tools (JRT) on Windows.

Once you sucessfully complete the following procedure you will easily be able to download, run and maintain the JRT. The JRT currently uses Perl and C to provide extended capabilities and improved speed to the APDL programming. With the configuration described here, you will easily be able to add your own programming using any programming or scripting language that will run under XP.

The ATL can be accessed online at http://ansys.300m.us/mac_html/tools with the following

1. Install Ansys

Be sure to install Ansys or Ansys/ED and not Ansys Workbench.

2. Update the start.ans File

For Ansys 9.0 download start90.ans to the "C:\Program Files\Ansys Inc\v90\ANSYS\apdl" folder.

For Ansys/ED 9.0 download this start90.ans to the "C:\Program Files\Ansys Inc\v90\ANSYSED\apdl" folder.

The above files configure Ansys to use the multi-window GUI which has better support for toolbars and for using interactive APDL in the Input Window. See sample layout for an example of maximizing the space available for toolbar buttons and input lines.

The Ansys 9.0 start file performs a check to make sure Perl is working okay. If Perl is not working it will issue a warning. You can continue to work without Perl, but it is recommended to resolve the problem. Ansys/ED 5.7 and later no longer support running external programs with the /SYS and /SYP commands. The global parameter _have_sys must be set to 1 in order to use Perl, otherwise APDL is used by default. See par_array.mac for an example.

3. Install Cygwin

Cygwin provides an interactive Bash shell and a good collection of Open Source GNU tools, including a C compiler, Perl rsync. Follow this link for help: Installing Cygwin

4. Getting the APDL Tool Library

The newly installed Cygwin will be used whenever you want to download the latest set of tools. First, you need to install the getmacs shell script. Double click on the Cygwin icon and type the following command at the Bash shell prompt:

	rsync -v btdt.org::ansys/util/getmacs /usr/local/bin
You should see output something like this: 

	getmacs

	sent 95 bytes  received 869 bytes  642.67 bytes/sec
	total size is 767  speedup is 0.80

The getmacs script by default is set to download the tools to c:/ansys/apdl. If you want them somewhere else, use a text editor and edit the MAC=c:/ansys/apdl line within the c:\cygwin\usr\local\bin\getmacs file.

Now, everytime you want to download the ATL, double click on the Cygwin icon and type getmacs at the prompt. You can type the getmacs command from any directory.

5. Define Windows Environment Variables

In order for Ansys to be able to find the ATL macros, C programs, the Perl interpreter and the associated Perl scripts, three Windows environment variables need to be defined.