Installing NWTC Cae Tools On Pcs Running Windows

Installing NWTC CAE Tools
on PCs Running Windows®

by
Marshall L. Buhl, Jr.

National Wind Technology Center
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Golden, Colorado
August 23, 2013
Introduction Setting Up a Folder for Batch Files

Installing and running console applications such as This is something you need to do only once. After
the National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) you’ve done it for one of our tools, you will not need to
computer-aided engineering (CAE) tools is different repeat the process for other tools.
than it is for normal 32/64-bit Windows applications. Create a folder somewhere in your file system.
Usually, you will want to install our tools in such a This tutorial will use C:\Batch. Now, add the folder to
way that they will run from a command window and your search path; you must have Administrator privi-
from any folder. leges on your PC to do this.
This short paper will guide you through the instal- In Windows XP, you click on Start, Settings, and
lation of our tools for the various Windows® operating then Control Panel. Double-clicking on the System file
systems. This tutorial will assume the tool being or icon will bring up the System Properties window.
installed is Crunch, but these instructions should work Click on the Advanced tab. Near the bottom of this tab,
for any of the other command-line tools we distribute. click the Environment Variables button.
In Windows 7, Windows 8, Server 2008, or Server
Retrieving Files from the Archives 2012, hit the Windows key (Alt-Home for a remote
You should download the archive of a tool from our system), right-click on Computer, and select
web server page http://wind.nrel.gov/ Properties. Click on Advanced system settings. You
designcodes/. The archive file should have a name will likely be asked to provide administrative rights to
such as Crunch_v3.02.00c-mlb.exe. Create a folder proceed. Click on the Environment Variables button.
called Crunch somewhere on your file system and put The Environment Variables window is the same for
this file there. For this example, we will assume the all versions of Windows. Under System Variables,
folder’s name is C:\DesignCodes\Crunch. You can scroll down to find the Path variable and click on Edit.
double click on the file from Windows Explorer or by Click inside the Variable Value box and hit the Home
entering Crunch_v233 at a command prompt with the key to get to the beginning of the line. Enter
Crunch folder as the current directory. This will create “C:\Batch;” to the beginning of the path in the
some files and folders. Included in the Crunch folder Variable value box. Do not forget to put in the semi-
will be files called Crunch_win32.exe and colon separator. Click the OK buttons to close all the
Crunch_win64.exe. These are the executable files for windows we used to change the path and put the
32- and 64-bit versions of Crunch. change into effect.
Not all of our programs have both versions and if it The change you just made will be permanent and
not specified, the program is probably a 32-bit pro- will apply to any new command windows you open.
gram. The 32-bit programs can run on 64-bit You do not need to reboot your PC. The search paths
Windows, but 64-bit programs cannot run on 32-bit for windows that were already open when you make
Windows. Using a 64-bit version is more important for the change will not be updated, so you cannot use them
our postprocessors than it is for other programs be- to run the tool.
cause some of them hold large quantities of data in
memory at once.
Creating a Batch File
The next step is to create a batch file to invoke the
tool. Using a plain-text editor, create a file called
Crunch.bat in the C:\Batch folder. You need only one
line in the batch file. Its contents should look some-
thing similar to this:
C:\DesignCodes\Crunch\Crunch_win64.exe %*
This tells the operating system to find an executable
file named Crunch_win64.exe in the
C:\DesignCodes\Crunch folder. The %* tells the batch
file to pass the command-line arguments to
Crunch_win64.exe.
Invoking the Tool

To run a tool, open a command window and set the
folder to one where you have your user-created files. It
is inadvisable to do your work in the design-code fold-
ers. To start the tool, enter something similar to this:
Crunch MyFile.cru
That’s all there is to it. Happy computing!
Caveats
NREL makes no promises about the usability or ac-
curacy of this tutorial.
Acknowledgements
Funding for updating this tutorial came from the
U.S. Department of Energy under contract No. DE-
AC36-08GO28308 to the Alliance for Sustainable
Energy, LLC. Subtask WE110336 paid for the effort.
The previous documents that detailed the steps for us-
ing Windows NT® and Windows XP were created us-
ing funds from previous subtasks and contracts.
Feedback
If you have comments about this tutorial, please
contact Marshall Buhl. E-mail and posting to our fo-
rums are the preferred methods of communication.
Marshall L. Buhl, Jr.

NWTC/3811
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
1617 Cole Blvd.
Golden, CO 80401-3393
United States of America
Web: http://wind.nrel.gov
Email: [email protected]
Forum: http://wind.nrel.gov/forum/wind/
Voice: (303) 384-6914

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Installing NWTC CAE Tools

on PCs Running Windows®

Marshall L. Buhl, Jr.

August 23, 2013

Introduction Setting Up a Folder for Batch Files

Invoking the Tool

Marshall L. Buhl, Jr.

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