The program writes and reads many files for data storage and retrieval. File names follow this pattern:
Name.Ext
Name defaults to the jobname, which you can specify while entering the program or by choosing (equivalent to issuing the /FILNAME command). The default jobname is FILE (or file).
Ext is a unique, two- to four-character identifier that identifies the contents of the file. For example, Jobname.db is the database file and Jobname.emat is the element matrix file.
The following program file topics are available:
Table 3.2: File Types and Formats lists the main file types and their formats. For more information about files, see File Management and Files in the Basic Analysis Guide.
Table 3.2: File Types and Formats
| File Type | File Name | File Format | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Log file | Jobname.log | ASCII | ||||||
| Error file | Jobname.err | ASCII | ||||||
| Output file | Jobname.out | ASCII | ||||||
| Database file | Jobname.db | Binary | ||||||
Results file:
|
Jobname.xxx
| Binary | ||||||
| Load step file | Jobname.Sn | ASCII | ||||||
| Element matrices | Jobname.emat | Binary |
On the following commands, you can specify the name and path of the file to be written:
In such cases, the filename can contain up to 248 characters, including the directory name, and the extension can contain up to eight characters. If the file name uses more than 248 characters, including the directory, you must use a soft link on Linux systems.
The program can process blanks in file or directory names, so blank spaces are allowed in object names. Be aware that many Linux commands do not support object names with spaces. When an object has a blank space in its name, always enclose the name in a pair of single quotes.
On Linux systems, all directory names except for /(root) should end with a slash (/). For example, to run the program using an input file called vm1.dat, which resides in the directory /ansys_inc/v251/ansys/data/verif, use the following commands:
ansys251 /inp,vm1,dat, /ansys_inc/v251/ansys/data/verif/
On Windows systems, you must use backslashes (\) instead of slashes in directory names. For example, on a Windows system, the directory path shown in the Linux example above looks like this:
/inp,vm1,dat, Program Files\ANSYS Inc\V251\ANSYS\data\verif\
The Jobname.log file (also called the session log) is especially important, because it provides a complete log of your session. The file opens immediately when you enter the program, and it records all commands you execute, whether you execute those commands via GUI paths or type them in directly. You can read the Jobname.log file, view it while in Mechanical APDL, edit it, and input it later.
The program always appends log data to the log file instead of overwriting it. If you change the jobname while in an session, the log file name does not change to the new jobname. For more information about Jobname.log, see Using the Session and Command Logs.