{"id":297,"date":"2019-10-11T13:09:33","date_gmt":"2019-10-11T17:09:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/engit\/?page_id=297"},"modified":"2026-02-19T13:26:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T18:26:17","slug":"comsol","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/engit\/knowledge-base\/comsol\/","title":{"rendered":"COMSOL"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 id=\"LicenseOptions\">License Options<\/h2>\n<h3 id=\"ClassKitLicense.28CKL.29\">Class Kit License (CKL)<\/h3>\n<p>For lesson preparation, classroom use, homework, and activities for ordinary courses, you should use the Class Kit License. This license is also available remotely on the Eng-Grid (see <strong>On Linux<\/strong> below), as well as on Citrix. Instructions for Citrix can be found here: <a class=\"http\" href=\"\/engit\/Citrix\">Citrix<\/a>. We can run 90 simultaneous instances of COMSOL under the Class Kit License.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"ResearchLicense.28FNL.29\">Research License (FNL)<\/h3>\n<p>For research, BU offers a floating network license which allows us to install COMSOL on any BU owned machine. This license is also available remotely on Eng-Grid (see <strong>On Linux<\/strong> below). We can only run 3 simultaneous instances of COMSOL under the Research license. It is important to note that running batch jobs on Eng-Grid uses a separate license pool of 3 batch licenses. See <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/engit\/knowledge-base\/grid\/software\/batchcomsol\/\">BatchComsol<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"AvailableModules\">Available Modules<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>AC\/DC<\/li>\n<li>Acoustics<\/li>\n<li>CAD Import<\/li>\n<li>CFD<\/li>\n<li>Chemical Reaction Engineering<\/li>\n<li>ECAD Import<\/li>\n<li>Heat Transfer<\/li>\n<li>LiveLink for Excel<\/li>\n<li>LiveLink for MATLAB<\/li>\n<li>MEMS<\/li>\n<li>Microfluidics<\/li>\n<li>Molecular Flow<\/li>\n<li>Multibody Dynamics<\/li>\n<li>Nonlinear Structural Materials<\/li>\n<li>Optimization<\/li>\n<li>Particle Tracing<\/li>\n<li>RF<\/li>\n<li>Structural Mechanics<\/li>\n<li>Wave Optics<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 id=\"OnLinux\">On ENG Linux Lab systems<\/h2>\n<p>COMSOL is available on all machines in all of the public Linux labs in the College of Engineering.<\/p>\n<pre class=\"darkSnippet\">$ comsol<\/pre>\n<p>You can also run a non-interactive instance of COMSOL by invoking &#8220;batch mode&#8221; when starting the program. See <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/engit\/knowledge-base\/grid\/software\/batchcomsol\/\">BatchComsol<\/a><\/strong> for more information.<\/p>\n<p>For interactive use, run one of these quick commands to launch COMSOL with the appropriate license:<\/p>\n<div>\n<table>\n<tbody class=\"wikiTable\">\n<tr>\n<td><strong>License Type<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>Command<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Default (Educational)<\/td>\n<td><tt>comsol<\/tt><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Educational license<\/td>\n<td><tt>comsol-educational<\/tt><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Research license<\/td>\n<td><tt>comsol-research<\/tt><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<p>Specific versions of COMSOL can also be called with shortcuts. For example:<\/p>\n<pre>$ comsol62-educational \r\n$ comsol62\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0# COMSOL Classkit license is the default                            \r\n$ comsol61-research \r\n$ comsol62-research<\/pre>\n<h3 id=\"ModuleSystem\">Module System<\/h3>\n<p>If you want to do something more complex than run the GUI tool, you want to use <a class=\"http\" href=\"http:\/\/modules.sourceforge.net\/\">Environment Modules<\/a>. They give you full access to all the COMSOL tools, libs, and paths. For example, to load version 5.3a of COMSOL with the research license:<\/p>\n<pre class=\"darkSnippet\">$ module load comsol\/6.2<\/pre>\n<h3 id=\"WithMatlab\">With Matlab<\/h3>\n<p>There are 2 ways of getting Matlab and COMSOL to talk. The first is if you&#8217;re working in Comsol and would like to connect Matlab to the running instance. Simply click <strong>File &gt; Client\/Server\/MATLAB &gt; Connect to MATLAB<\/strong> from the menu bar. This will launch matlab if it&#8217;s not running, and add the comsol toolboxes to it.<\/p>\n<p>You can also run &#8220;comsol server matlab&#8221; from the command line, and it will start Matlab with the COMSOL toolboxes already loaded.<\/p>\n<pre class=\"darkSnippet\">$ module load comsol\/6.3 matlab\/9.4\r\n$ comsol server matlab\r\nCOMSOL Multiphysics server 6.2 started listening on port 2036\r\nUse the console command 'close' to exit the program<\/pre>\n<p>Key is using the research license for <strong>LiveLink\u00a0for MATLAB\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h3 id=\"Troubleshooting3DRenderingErrors\">Troubleshooting 3D Rendering Errors<\/h3>\n<p>If your remote COMSOL interface crashes with cryptic error messages with &#8220;GLX&#8221; in the name, it\\&#8217;s having trouble using hardware graphics rendering over the remote connection. You can try to force hardware (&#8220;direct&#8221;) rendering with <a href=\"\/engit\/knowledge-base\/grid\/vncoverssh\">a VNC connection<\/a>, or can just choose software rendering by appending <tt>-3drend sw<\/tt> to your original COMSOL startup command, for example:<\/p>\n<pre class=\"darkSnippet\">$ comsol-research -3drend sw<\/pre>\n<h2 id=\"OnWindows\">On Windows<\/h2>\n<p>The COMSOL Class Kit License is available on all CAD, ECL, and Ingalls PCs.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"strike\">Any Engineering undergraduate student or a graduate student who needs COMSOL for a class (NOT research), you can install the software by running setup.exe from the version directory you want within: <\/span><\/p>\n<pre class=\"darkSnippet\"> \\\\ad\\eng\\support\\software\\windows\\i386\\comsol\\multiphysics<\/pre>\n<p>You\\&#8217;ll be asked to choose a licensing method, select &lt;port&gt;@&lt;server&gt;.<\/p>\n<p>For the Class Kit License (CKL) enter:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\"><tt class=\"backtick\">1718@comsollm.bu.edu<\/tt><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you want to use MATLAB with COMSOL you can point the installer to the MATLAB directory when you get to the \\&#8217;options\\&#8217; stage of the installation (assuming you already have MATLAB installed) in:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">C:\\Program Files\\matlab<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Via Citrix Workspace<\/h2>\n<p>COMSOL is also available via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/engit\/knowledge-base\/citrix\/\">Citrix, by installing Citrix Workspace<\/a>, but don&#8217;t use this for research. The Citrix COMSOL installations are meant for homework problems. They don&#8217;t have the resourses for large, long running simulations; they are rebooted nightly; and they use the ClassKit license that is solely for educational use.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"CheckAvailabilityofLicenses\">Check Availability of Licenses<\/h2>\n<p>If you are experiencing licensing issues, please run these commands to view the license availability on the eng-grid:<\/p>\n<pre class=\"darkSnippet\">$ comsol-educational-license-info\r\n$ comsol-research-license-info<\/pre>\n<p>or for any other systems with lmstat:<\/p>\n<pre class=\"darkSnippet\">$ lmstat -a -c 1718@comsollm.bu.edu | less\r\n$ lmstat -a -c 1718@comsolreseaerchlm.bu.edu | less<\/pre>\n<h2 id=\"Questions\">Questions<\/h2>\n<p>If you have questions regarding operation, install, or licensing of COMSOL, please email <a class=\"mailto\" href=\"mailto:enghelp@bu.edu\">enghelp@bu.edu<\/a>. If you have questions regarding using COMSOL or your model, try their professionally moderated forum and tutorials:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a class=\"https\" href=\"https:\/\/www.comsol.com\/forum\">https:\/\/www.comsol.com\/forum<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"https\" href=\"https:\/\/www.comsol.com\/models\">https:\/\/www.comsol.com\/models<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In rare situations where the forum is inappropriate, email <a class=\"mailto\" href=\"mailto:enghelp@bu.edu\">enghelp@bu.edu<\/a> to begin the process of submitting a ticket to COMSOL Support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>License Options Class Kit License (CKL) For lesson preparation, classroom use, homework, and activities for ordinary courses, you should use the Class Kit License. This license is also available remotely on the Eng-Grid (see On Linux below), as well as on Citrix. Instructions for Citrix can be found here: Citrix. We can run 90 simultaneous [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16541,"featured_media":0,"parent":82,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/engit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/297"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/engit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/engit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/engit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16541"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/engit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/engit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2993,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/engit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/297\/revisions\/2993"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/engit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/82"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/engit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}