Example Uses for Export Options Features

The Tools > Options > Export Options feature is intended to make it easier for different users to use Ansys Electromagnetics tools installed on shared directories or network drives. This section outlines some use cases enabled by this feature.

Options that Apply to All Users

In many cases, an Ansys Electromagnetics tool installation is administered and maintained by a single user or group and used by a number of other users or groups. The permissions of the Ansys Electromagnetics tool installation may be set so that the administrator may add, delete or modify files, but other users may only read or execute these files. The administrator may set the recommended option settings in the installation default config file and/or the host dependent default options config file. These config files reside within the installation directory hierarchy, and should generally have the same permissions as other Ansys Electromagnetics tool installation files. This allows that administrator to control these settings, but does not allow other users to add, remove, or change these settings.

Each user can override any of these settings, if needed. This may be done using the Desktop UI, which affects the host-dependent user options config file. It may also be done using the host-independent user options config file. If user has overridden an option setting in either of the user files, the user may revert back to the option settings provided by the administrator by removing the setting of the same option in the host-dependent user option config file and/or the host-independent user option config file.

For global defaults, the administrator may set a value in the installation default config file. These settings will to apply to all users on all hosts.

In some cases, there are significant differences between the capabilities of different hosts. The host-dependent default config file may be used to specify different default values on some hosts. Any setting in a host dependent default config file would affect all users running on the specified host. The installation default value is used if there is no value specified for the setting in the host-dependent default config file for the current host. Note that the host-dependent default config file is named <hostname>.xml, where hostname is the name of the host computer.

Example: Searching for a Registry Key Pathname

Both administrators and ordinary users may occasionally use the UpdateRegistry command line tool to add, change or delete settings. To use this tool, the registry key pathname must be known by the user. The -GetKeys option may be used to quickly search for a key pathname if some information is known about it. For example, if the administrator knows that there is a setting related to issuing warning messages when available disk space is low, but does not know the exact key name, the following command may list some of the keys related to disk space:

UpdateRegistry -GetKeys disk -ProductName ElectronicsDesktop2024.2

This will display a list of all keys that match the string "disk" case insensitively.

Typical output may look like the following:

Registry keys matching pattern <disk> case insensitively:

Desktop/Settings/ProjectOptions/DiskLimitForAbort: value is <0> at level <user_machine>

Example: Setting an Installation Default Value

The normal default for the Options/General/Desktop Performance/Warn when available disk space is less than setting is 0 MB. If the administrator is concerned that running out of disk space might be a common problem, the administrator could set the installation default for the warn setting setting to 1000 MB, for example. This limit would then apply to all users running on all hosts. The administrator could use the following command to change this setting for Ansys Electronics Desktop:

UpdateRegistry -Set -ProductName ANSYSElectronicsDesktop2024.2
-RegistryKey Desktop/Settings/ProjectOptions/DiskLimitForAbort
-RegistryValue 1000
-RegistryLevel install

Example: Setting a Host-Dependent Default Value

For this example, assume that all hosts have two cores, except for three hosts: bighost1, bighost2, and bighost3, which have eight cores each. The administrator has set the Desktop/Settings/ProjectOptions/NumberOfProcessors option value to 2 in the installation default config file. The administrator may set the Desktop/Settings/ProjectOptions/NumberOfProcessors option value to 8 in the host-dependent default config files for the three hosts having 8 cores: bighost1, bighost2 and bighost3. The administrator may log in to host bighost1 and run the following command to change this setting for the host-dependent default options config file for host bighost1:

UpdateRegistry -set -ProductName ElectronicsDesktop2024.2
-RegistryKey Desktop/Settings/ProjectOptions/NumberOfProcessors
-RegistryValue 8
-RegistryLevel install_machine

To make this change for the other two hosts, the administrator would log in to bighost2 and bighost3, and run the same command on each of those hosts.

Example: Reverting from a User-Defined Option Value to the Administrator Default

Consider the case in which Electronics Desktop was installed and the administrator initially did not set a value for the Desktop/Settings/ProjectOptions/DiskLimitForAbort setting in the default installation config file. User jsmith (who always uses host jshost) wanted to be warned before disk space dropped to zero, so he set the Desktop/Settings/ProjectOptions/DiskLimitForAbort to 100 MB using the UI. This setting is recorded in the host dependent user options config file for host jshost and user jsmith. Now the administrator learns that many users are running into disk space issues, so that administrator sets the installation default value for the setting Desktop/Settings/ProjectOptions/DiskLimitForAbort to 1000 MB, as in the above example.

When user jsmith runs Electronics Desktop on host jshost, the disk limit is 100 MB, not 1000 MB, because the host-dependent user options config file overrides all of the other config files. User jsmith may revert to the administrator provided default by removing this setting from the host dependent user options config file for host jshost and user jsmith. The following command may be run by user jsmith on host jshost to remove this setting:

UpdateRegistry -Delete -ProductName ElectronicsDesktop2024.2
-RegistryKey Desktop/Settings/ProjectOptions/DiskLimitForAbort
-RegistryLevel user_machine

If user jsmith had added a value for this setting to the host-independent user options config file, then user jsmith would also run the following command to remove this setting from the host-independent user options config file:

UpdateRegistry -Delete -ProductName ElectronicsDesktop2024.2
-RegistryKey Desktop/Settings/ProjectOptions/DiskLimitForAbort
-RegistryLevel user