The PyMAPDL project supports Pythonic access to MAPDL to be able to
communicate with the MAPDL process directly from Python. The latest
ansys-mapdl-core package enables a more comprehensive interface with
MAPDL and supports:
- All the features of the original module (for example, Pythonic commands and interactive sessions).
- Remote connections to MAPDL from anywhere via gRPC.
- Direct access to MAPDL arrays, meshes, and geometry as Python objects.
- Low-level access to the MAPDL solver through APDL math in a SciPy- like interface.
Here's a quick demo of PyMAPDL within Visual Studio Code:
PyMAPDL works within Jupyter Notebooks, the standard Python console, or in batch mode on Windows, Linux, and even Mac OS.
For more information, see the Documentation page. For some examples, see the Examples gallery.
Feel free to post issues and other questions at PyMAPDL Issues. This is the best place to post questions and code.
This project was formerly known as pyansys, and we'd like to thank
all the early adopters, contributors, and users who submitted issues,
gave feedback, and contributed code through the years. The
pyansys project has been taken up at Ansys and is being leveraged in
creating new Pythonic, cross-platform, and multi-language service-based
interfaces for Ansys's products. Your contributions to
pyansys has shaped it into a better solution.
The pyansys project is expanding beyond just MAPDL, and while
there are many new features and changes to the original Python module,
many steps have been taken to ensure compatibility with legacy code
while supporting new features. The original python module has been
split up into the following projects and modules:
For more information on each project, visit their GitHub pages.
The ansys-mapdl-core package currently supports Python 3.7 through
Python 3.10 on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.
Install the latest release from PyPi with:
pip install ansys-mapdl-core
Alternatively, install the latest from PyMAPDL GitHub via:
pip install git+https://github.com/pyansys/pymapdl.git
For a local "development" version, install with (requires pip >= 22.0):
git clone https://github.com/pyansys/pymapdl.git cd pymapdl pip install -e .
If you lack an internet connection on your install machine, the recommended way of installing PyMAPDL is downloading the wheelhouse archive from the Releases Page for your corresponding machine architecture.
Each wheelhouse archive contains all the python wheels necessary to install PyMAPDL from scratch on Windows and Linux for Python 3.7 and 3.9. You can install this on an isolated system with a fresh python or on a virtual environment.
For example, on Linux with Python 3.7, unzip it and install it with the following:
unzip PyMAPDL-v0.62.dev1-wheelhouse-Linux-3.7.zip wheelhouse pip install ansys-mapdl-core -f wheelhouse --no-index --upgrade --ignore-installed
If you're on Windows with Python 3.9, unzip to a wheelhouse directory and
install using the same command as above.
Consider installing using a virtual environment.
You must have a local licenced copy of Ansys to run MAPDL prior and including 2021R1. If you have the latest version of 2021R1 you do not need MAPDL installed locally and can connect to a remote instance.
You can launch MAPDL locally directly from Python using launch_mapdl:
from ansys.mapdl.core import launch_mapdl
mapdl = launch_mapdl()This automatically searches for the latest local version of MAPDL, launches it as a background process, and immediately connects to it. You can then start sending python commands to MAPDL.
If you want to connect to a session of MAPDL on a remote computer
(either locally the LAN or through the internet), first ensure you
have MAPDL started in gRPC server mode. This example assumes that you
are launching an instance locally from Windows, but it can be easily
adapted to run from Linux, or the LAN provided the necessary ports are
open. This example specifies the port with -port 50052, but this
option can be left out if you plan on using the default port 50052.
start "MAPDL" "%ANSYS211_DIR%\bin\winx64\ANSYS211.exe" -port 50052 -grpc
Next, connect to the instance of MAPDL from python with:
>>> from ansys.mapdl.core import Mapdl
>>> ip = '127.0.0.1'
>>> mapdl = Mapdl(ip=ip, port=50052, start_instance=False)
>>> print(mapdl)A successful connection returns:
Product: ANSYS Mechanical Enterprise MAPDL Version: RELEASE 2020 R2 BUILD 20.2TEST UPDATE 20200601 ansys.mapdl.core Version: 0.57.0
Should you want to connect to this instance of MAPDL from a remote
computer, you substitute ip= with the LAN or WAN address of the
computer you wish to connect to. Depending on your network settings,
you may have to open local ports or enable port redirection across the
WAN.
You run MAPDL commands via:
mapdl.run('/PREP7')Nearly all the built-in MAPDL commands have an associated pythonic method mapped to it. For example, /PREP7 is:
mapdl.prep7()There are also non-mapdl commands such as mapdl.eplot which plot
elements using vtk and pyvista rather than relying on MAPDL's
graphics server. Another is mapdl.vget, which leverages gRPC to
rapidly exchange binary arrays from MAPDL to Python rather than
relying on file IO to exchange data.
Additionally, there are the post_processing, geometry, and
mesh properties, which you can use to perform remote (or local)
post processing without result file exchange, display geometry
properties, or view mesh statistics. Additionally, there's the
parameters property which shows the active MAPDL parameters, and
you can use to send or receive arrays between MAPDL and Python.
For more information, see the full documentation at PyMAPDL Documentation.
You can run MAPDL within a container on any OS with docker.
For information on using MAPDL within a container, see MAPDL on Docker README.
If you use PyMAPDL for research and would like to cite the module
and source, you can visit pyansys Zenodo and generate the
correct citation. For example, the BibTex citation is:
@software{alexander_kaszynski_2020_4009467,
author = {Alexander Kaszynski},
title = {{pyansys: Python Interface to MAPDL and Associated
Binary and ASCII Files}},
month = aug,
year = 2020,
publisher = {Zenodo},
version = {0.43.2},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.4009467},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4009467}
}
Because the citation here might not be current, visit the link above to obtain the most recent citation.
PyMAPDL is licensed under
the MIT license.
ansys-mapdl-core package makes no commercial claim over Ansys
whatsoever. This tool extends the functionality of MAPDL by
adding a Python interface to the MAPDL service without changing the
core behavior or license of the original software. The use of the
interactive APDL control of PyMAPDL requires a legally licensed
local copy of Ansys.
To get a copy of Ansys, visit Ansys.