External commands allow you to add your own customized extensions to Mechanical APDL without relinking the program. You can create custom routines in C that access any of the Mechanical APDL API functions, link them into shared libraries using the supplied utilities, and execute the routines via the "external command" feature within Mechanical APDL. In addition, the program provides special commands that list all available external commands and allow you to reset all currently referenced external commands.

External command capability is supported on all Linux platforms. Refer to your Ansys, Inc. Linux Installation Guide for currently supported compilers; the following instructions assume the presence of compatible compilers and linkers.