What is in this Article?

1. Before We Start

2. Installation Steps

3. Check For Updates

4. Starting and Exiting Akselos Modeler

BEFORE WE START

This section will specify the system requirements for Akselos Modeler 2023 and guide users to install the software.

System Requirements

• Minimum 4 GB of physical memory. Note that to be able to open large models, it is recommended to have 8 GB of physical memory or more.

• 500 MB of free disk space to store the software. Additional disk space may be required depending on the size of the model used.  A large model may require 5-10 GB disk space. 

• Microsoft Windows 7, 8, 10 or 11 is required. Windows 11 is recommended.

• Windows 64-bit is required. 

• Administrator privileges are required during the installation.

• Akselos Modeler requires access to the internet for the processes Akselos_modeler.exe and hg.exe.

INSTALLATION STEPS

STEP 1 -   Register on Akselos Dashboard and Obtain Access to Your Organization 

Go to Akselos Dashboard (dashboard.akselos.com) in a web browser and create a new account.

After registering, you must be added to an organization on the Dashboard.  If your organization does not already have an account on Akselos Dashboard, contact Akselos support to create a new account for your organization; otherwise, ask an admin user from your organization's account to grant access for your username.

STEP 2 -  Download and Install Akselos Modeler

Read more: Where to download the latest Akselos Modeler?

Akselos Modeler is a software application that runs locally on your computer and allows you to set up models, perform solves (by communicating with Akselos Cloud), and visualize/post-process results.

After registering and being granted permission to access your organization on Akselos Dashboard, log in and use the Download Modeler link to download the Akselos Modeler installer executable.  If you have not been granted access to an organization these buttons will not be available.

After downloading, install Akselos Modeler by running the installer executable.

This will open the Setup Wizard. Please follow the steps shown below to complete the installation:

There are two options available if you more than one account on your local machine:

• Only for me: Install and only available in your account folder, does not require admin permissions (recommended if you are not the administrator)

• Everybody: Install in the Program Files folder by default, available for all users. Require admin permissions.

After clicking the Install button in the above picture, a Windows “User Account Control” dialog may appear to confirm that you allow the installer to install the files required by Akselos Modeler. If you are an Administrator just need to choose Yes. If you are not in an Administrator group, you will be asked to enter the password of an administrator account to be able to proceed.

STEP 3 -  Launch Akselos Modeler from Windows Desktop

After successfully installing the software, an icon should be created on your Desktop. Use this to launch Akselos Modeler.

STEP 4 - Ensure Internet Access

Akselos Modeler connects to cloud.akselos.com and dashboard.akselos.com on port 443.  Ask the network administrator to ensure such connections are allowed.  The processes that will perform these connections are Akselos_modeler.exe and hg.exe.  Any firewall on the local machine should be configured to allow connections from these processes.  The connections use the standard TLS protocol for secure communications.

In case where proxy server is used, in order to get Akselos Modeler connections work, below settings need to be set:

• The proxy must support HTTPS.

• Then, you need to set two environment variables. Both environment variables should be given the same value. It should look like:

set HTTPS_PROXY=https://proxyhost:port

set HTTP_PROXY=https://proxyhost:port

• Finally, if the proxy is going to decrypt/re-encrypt HTTPS, then you need to set the REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE environment variable to point to your certificate bundle (i.e. .pem file): 

set REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE=path_to_your_pem_file

Otherwise, Akselos Modeler will use the default .pem file in the "certifi" folder of the Akselos Modeler's installation directory  which might not work with your proxy.

STEP 5 -  Setup Akselos Data Directory

Besides the software folder (usually at C:\Program Files\Akselos), Akselos Modeler also needs access to another directory in order to store data such as meshes and other model data. We refer to this directory as the Akselos “data directory”.

By default, the data directory will be located inside the current user’s AppData directory (i.e. C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Akselos\Modeler\5.1.0). When you launch Akselos Modeler, it will check if you can write to this folder. If you cannot, then you will see the warning below and you will be asked to select a new data directory location.

Also, users can change the location of the data directory from within the user interface at any time by clicking on the About button in the top right of Akselos Modeler, and then using the “Set data directory” button. If the data directory is changed, then the user interface must be restarted for this change to take effect.

In the figure below, we have set the data directory to be “I:/Alselos_data”.

Note: all the folder/disk drive within the data directory should not contains the "space" in the name to avoid unexpected error. Symbols are recommended to separate each word.

For example:

• avoid: I:/Akselos Data
• should be: I:/Akselos_Data 
  

STEP 6 -  Download Collections

When launching Akselos Modeler,  if you want to download one or more Collections so that you can assemble and solve models, go to the Cloud tab in Akselos Modeler, and open the Authentication menu. Enter your login and password and confirm that you see the "Authentication successful" message.

Now you may import a Collection from the server. To do this go to the Assemble tab, and choose "Import -> collection from Akselos Cloud". Below we illustrate the importing of Hybrid_Shiploader collection from the Akselos Cloud server.

Note: Contact [email protected] to access a sample collection

A dialog box will appear that shows the download progress:

STEP 7 -  Open Model and Solve

After the Collection downloading successfully finishes, we can open an Akselos model (an .aks file) as shown below picture. Note that the data directory contains example .aks files for each Collection, so you can use one of these files to check that you can correctly open a model.

CHECK FOR UPDATES

To update your Akselos Modeler:

• Open Akselos Updater by clicking the About button in the Model ribbon. In the About box, click Check for Updates.

• Then wait while Akselos Modeler looks for the latest updates for your computer.

• If you see a dialog box telling you that important updates are available, or telling you information about the update (new features, enhancements, bug fixes), click the Download button to download and install the new version.

• After downloading the new version, the Setup Wizard will automatically open. Please complete the installation as STEP 1.

For information on Akselos Modeler Automatic Updates, visit Akselos Dashboard website.

STARTING AND EXITING AKSELOS MODELER

After the Modeler is successfully installed, an icon should be created on your desktop, double clicking on this icon to launch the Modeler.

There are two ways to close Akselos Modeler 2023:

• After saving the files in the process, click File  → Quit 
• Click the Close (×) button on the top right corner of the user interface to exit the software.

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH AKSELOS MODELER?

• Working folder and data management